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MAY IVERSON 

TACKLES LIFE . 


BY 

ELIZABETH JORDAN 

AUTHOR 

"MAY IVERSON — HER BOOK" 

" TALES OF THE CLOISTER ” 
"MANY KINGDOMS” 

ETC. ETC. 


/ 

ILLUSTRATED 





HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 
MCMXII 



COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY HARPER & BROTHERS 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
PUBLISHED AUGUST, 1912 




€CU310406 
>U) V- 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. PAGE 

Foreword vii 

I. Woman Suffrage at St. Catharine’s i 

II. I Write a Play 27 

III. The Reduction Cure for Kittie James 54 

IV. When Churchyards Yawn .... 75 

V. I Introduce Beauty Culture . . . 102 

VI. Mabel Blossom’s Pearl Pin . . . 126 

VII. The Call of Spring 146 

VIII. I Introduce Motion Study . . . . 174 

IX. Our Grouchometer Club 199 

X. The Shadow of the Angel .... 228 








ILLUSTRATIONS 


SHE HARDLY SPOKE TO US ON THE CAMPUS 

AT FIRST 

MEN AND WOMEN GOT UP AND READ FROM 

TYPE-WRITTEN SHEETS 

THE VERY NEXT DAY POOR KITTIE WAS IN 

THE INFIRMARY AGAIN 

I MADE UP MY MIND NEVER TO HAVE AN- 
OTHER IDEA IF I COULD HELP IT . . 

REVEREND MOTHER ASKED SEARCHING 
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PIN . . . 

I SAT DOWN ON THE EDGE OF THE BROOK 
THEY LET THEMSELVES DROP TO SAVE 

BENDING THEIR KNEES 

I CRUMPLED UP OVER THE KEYBOARD 


Frontispiece 


Facing p. 40 


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68 

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112 

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132 

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192 

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FOREWORD 


In answer to many letters received during the 
serial publication of this book, I wish to say 
that the convent of St. Catharine’s has no 
existence in fact. Its great walled garden, 
and the wide main hall, ‘‘with countless little 
music rooms opening olF it,” are features of the 
convent from which I graduated many years 
ago. The river, however, to which reference is 
so often made, flows through the grounds of a 
convent in another State, where I have spent 
my happiest hours; and the mound and the 
shrines are in the grounds of a third great con- 
vent in which my sister was a pupil. 

Of the girls, Mabel Blossom and May Iverson 
herself are the only ones drawn from life — as 
clearly as one can draw who must look at her 
models through the mists of more than twenty 
years. To-day Mabel Blossom’s children, their 
mother writes me, “know May Iverson by heart.” 

In describing the nuns no effort, of course, was 
made to portray individuals, except in one in- 


FOREWORD 


stance. In writing of Sister Irmingarde, I have 
tried, how vainly I sadly realize, to convey an 
impression of the personality and influence of the 
most inspiring teacher and the most wonderful 
woman I have ever known — the late Sister Mary 
Rita, of the Order of the Holy Cross. To her 
imperishable memory I dedicate this book — 
the last I shall write on convent life. 


Elizabeth Jordan. 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 



MAY IVERSON TACKLES 
LIFE 

I 

WOMAN SUFFRAGE AT ST. CATHARINe’s 

MAY as well admit at once that 
Maudie Joyce was the first girl at 
St. Catharine’s to feel any real in- 
terest in Woman Suffrage. Usually 
I am the one in our school set who 
thinks of new things, and does them; 
so the other girls have got in the habit of waiting 
for me, and not trying to think themselves, in 
their crude, immature way. But Maudie thought 
of suffrage all alone, though perhaps Kittie James 
helped to put the idea into her head. 

You see, Kittie started an anti-suffrage club, 
almost as soon as we got back to school in Sep- 
tember, and she made herself the president of it 
at the very first meeting. Before the meeting 
I 



MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


was over, Maudie Joyce asked Kittie what the 
club was for, and Kittie didn’t know; and 
Maudie asked what the members were going to 
do, and Kittie didn’t know that, either. Kittie 
said she just wanted to have a club because they 
had one in Chicago, and her sister, Mrs. George 
Morgan, belonged to it. She said the nicest 
feature of the Chicago club was that nobody in 
it did anything, and they joined because they 
didn’t have to do anything. It was a beautiful 
club, Kittie said, and so restful. 

Maudie walked off to a corner after these words 
fell from the lips of our young friend, and I fol- 
lowed her. I suppose we looked aloof and lonely 
and disapproving. Anyway, when the rest of 
the girls had watched us a while, most of them 
came over to the corner, too, and the end of it 
all was that Kittie only got three members for 
her new club. Mabel Muriel Murphy joined 
because Sister Edna, the nun she likes best, 
approves of gentle, womanly girls. Kittie told 
Mabel the gentlest and most womanly thing a 
girl could possibly do was to join her anti-suffrage 
club. Kittie said the real aim of her club was 
to keep women in their homes, where they be- 
longed, when they weren’t at her club; and she 
said Mabel Muriel Murphy wouldn’t have to have 
a single new idea all the time she belonged. 

2 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


Mabel said afterward it was true, too; she didn’t 
have any. 

But the whole thing seemed silly to Maudie 
and me. We are very intelligent girls, if we are 
only sixteen, and we have lots of mature ideas and 
emotions. If we join a club at all, we want to 
do something in it, even if it is only to eat. 
There weren’t going to be any ‘‘spreads” in 
Kittie’s club, she said at first, because she has a 
delicate stomach, and the convent infirmarians, 
who look after her, think she mustn’t eat between 
meals. They don’t let her eat much at meals, 
either, so Kittie is against girls overeating. It 
is an awful thing to behold, when you are held 
down yourself. 

However, Kittie went right on with her club, 
though, of course, she felt dreadfully disap- 
pointed when Maudie and I didn’t join. Well, 
indeed, did she know what that meant, and how 
impossible real success was without us. So she 
“strengthened her party,” as papa says great 
statesmen do, by giving offices to her friends. 
She made Mabel Muriel Murphy treasurer, be- 
cause Mabel Muriel’s father is rich and loves to 
pay bills; and she made Adeline Thurston secre- 
tary, because Adeline likes to write poems, and 
Kittie said writing reports of her club would 
be even more interesting than poetry. When 
3 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


Maudie asked how there could be any reports 
if there wasn’t anything done, Kittie said the 
club would write up the things that were not 
done. Then she looked past the sides of our 
faces and changed the subject by making Hattie 
Gregory vice-president. 

We left the meeting after that, and went to 
my room and ate pickles and talked about how 
sharper than a serpent’s tooth an ungrateful 
child is. Kittie was ’most like our own child, 
for she is more than a year younger than we are, 
and not intellectual; and Mabel Blossom and 
Maudie Joyce and I have really directed her 
education since she came to St. Catharine’s, three 
years ago. 

While we were talking, Maudie said she won- 
dered what Mabel Blossom would think of all 
this. Mabel hadn’t come back to school yet, but 
she was coming in a few days. Before I could 
answer, Maudie spoke again, in the quick way 
she has when she thinks of something. It’s just 
as if some one had touched a button in her brain, 
and often Maudie jumps when it happens. She 
jumped this time, and so did I, for I wasn’t ex- 
pecting her to, and the doctor says I am a nervous 
girl, singularly high-strung. Besides, of course, 
I have the artistic temperament, and you know 
what that does to folks. So I jumped, and then 
4 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


got cross over it, the way any literary artist 
would, who likes to be ‘‘well poised and digni- 
fied,” as Sister Edna says. Maudie Joyce didn’t 
even apologize. She just sat staring in front of 
her for a minute, as if she saw something that 
wasn’t there. Then she said, very slowly: 

“May Iverson, let’s be suflFragettes!” 

I jumped again, because the idea surprised me 
so much, and I said: 

“But we aren’t suffragettes, so how can we 
be.?” 

Maudie looked at me with a patient expression, 
like the one Sister Irmingarde wears sometimes in 
the class-room. I analyzed it once, for literary 
practice, to help me to observe life and put down 
all I see: it had astonishment in it, and pained 
regret, and resignation, and a kind of holy calm, 
struggling up through hopelessness. After I an- 
alyzed it, I wrote it all out and showed the paper 
to Sister Irmingarde, and asked her if I was right. 
She looked very much surprised at first, but 
finally she said she thought I had every ingredient 
right but one, and she would let me guess at that. 
Then she smiled her lovely smile, and changed 
the subject by asking me why my marks weren’t 
higher in algebra. Of course all this hasn’t any- 
thing to do with suffrage, or anti-suffrage, either. 
I just put it in to show how acute I am, so the 
5 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


gentle reader won’t be surprised when I read 
people’s hearts the way I’ll have to before I get 
through with this chapter. 

We will now return to Maudie. For a long 
time she was silent, and thought gathered deeply 
on her beautiful, high-bred face. At last she 
said, very solemnly: 

“We are, too, suffragettes. We’ve been suf- 
fragettes right along. May Iverson. Only we 
haven’t known it.” 

I gasped then, and began to say I couldn’t be 
anything like that without knowing it, for my 
first lesson in life had been to know myself, and 
I learned it when I was twelve. But Maudie 
went right on, rudely interrupting me. She said 
she hadn’t known her own heart till she went to 
Kittie’s meeting and heard Kittie talk. She said 
all the time she was there she kept feeling more 
and more uncomfortable and stirred up inside, 
but she did’nt know why. She even thought it 
might be indigestion. She said it was only this 
minute that it burst upon her gloriously that 
from the very beginning of Kittie’s meeting she 
had been a suffragette, unconsciously working 
for the cause, and trying to get independence of 
thought for women. She added that when she 
heard Kittie James express her silly little ideas, 
they made her so annoyed that she ’most wanted 
6 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


to slap Kittie. Then she woke up and knew she 
was a real suffragette, because that’s the way they 
feel in England. She read all about it in the news- 
papers, and a friend of her mother had seen 
Mrs. Pankhurst in Chicago. 

By this time Maudie was very much excited, 
so when I didn’t answer right off she said she was 
ready to die for the cause, and if I didn’t feel 
that way, too, and join the suffrage club she was 
going to get up, she’d never speak to me again as 
long as she lived. 

Of course that’s no way to talk to the daughter 
of a general in the army, who is a literary artist 
besides, and I pointed this out to Maudie in 
tones that were cold and firm. I said she couldn’t 
force me to anything by threats, but that she 
must appeal to my reason and convince me that 
suffrage was a good thing for women. And I 
added, frankly, that I didn’t think she could do 
it now, anyway, because she had annoyed me 
very much by the way she began. I was ’most 
sure already I wasn’t a suffragette and didn’t 
ever want to be one. 

Maudie changed her methods then, right off. 
She has associated with Mabel and me so long 
that she has a good deal of sense. She begged 
my pardon very politely, and she fixed me in a 
big, comfy chair, and gave me a glass of ginger 
7 


2 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


ale and a cookie, and started in to appeal to my 
reason. 

She said, with her first words, that she was 
glad to have my reason to appeal to, and not the 
other girls’, and she asked me to imagine how 
I’d feel if I ever had to appeal to Kittie James’s 
reason. When I clapped at that, like a real au- 
dience — for any one who knew Kittie could see 
what a powerful point it was — Maudie asked me 
if I was willing to follow the banner of Kittie 
James ‘^in a struggle which was of vital import 
to the human race.” (She got that out of a 
newspaper. We have to read one every day, for 
our Current Events class.) 

I stood right up, and said I didn’t want to 
follow Kittie’s banner, or anybody’s but my 
own. I said I just wanted to spend my life 
elevating the masses, by writing pure literature 
for them, and I didn’t see why men couldn’t go 
on voting, and doing heavy work like that, while 
we women uplifted them. I felt just full of 
thoughts, but Maudie made me sit down before 
I could say any more. She said I had promised 
to let her appeal to my reason, and she wished 
I would do it and not interrupt. That was a 
rebuke, and it annoyed me very much. I sat 
down right away; but it was quite a long time 
before I could get my intellect calm enough 
8 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


for Maudie to appeal to it. I kept think- 
ing, instead, of crushing things I might have 
said before I sat down, and it was dreadfully 
hard not to get up again and say them then. 
They would have been a help to Maudie, too. 

But Maudie was going right along with her 
speech all the time, and getting more excited 
every minute. I don’t believe she really cared 
much about suffrage when she began, but by the 
time she finished she was ready to give up her 
work at St. Catharine’s, and her dream of being 
a great actress, and go right out and be a suf- 
fragette, and get arrested and sent to prison. 
She had read about the English women in prison, 
and how they were fed through tubes, and she 
called them martyrs in a deathless cause, and 
said she was going to have Adeline Thurston 
write a poem about them. I spoke up again, 
then, and reminded her that Adeline was an anti- 
suffragist now, and would only write poems 
against suffrage. Maudie groaned and said: 
“This issue will split the convent. It will be 
like West Point at the outbreak of the Civil War, 
when the cadets had to take sides for the North 
or the South.” And she looked at me with her 
eyes blazing, and said, “May Iverson, at such a 
crisis will you be on the fence, thinking about 
life and trying to write stories, or will you be out 
9 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


on the great battle-field, fighting shoulder to 
shoulder with your dear ones!’’ 

. I tell you that made me sit up. When there’s 
any fighting to do, no Iverson turns his back upon 
the foe. I saw at once that it was time to take 
sides, and that it was going to be terribly excit- 
ing. Kittie James was already in the enemy’s 
camp, with three of our friends, and here was 
Maudie getting up an opposition party. I had 
to decide quickly, and I did it. The audience 
was convinced on the spot, and it got up and 
kissed Maudie and told her so. My, but she 
was glad! She just hugged me, though usually 
she’s a very undemonstrative girl. Then she 
said: ‘‘Now we’ve got to get Mabel Blossom on 
our side. The three of us can sweep the girls 
off their feet; but if Mabel goes over to Kittie, 
you and I will have a battle to hold our own.” 
And she added, gloomily; ‘‘We can never tell 
how Mabel Blossom will act about anything.” 

I knew that was so, and I promised Maudie 
I would appeal to Mabel’s reason, and try to 
make her join us the very minute she got back, 
before the other girls saw her. I said I’d meet 
Mabel at the station, and ask her which she pre- 
ferred to associate with on an intellectual level 
— Kittie James or us. I thought that might i 
fetch Mabel; she is so proud of her intellect. 

lO 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


Maudie said it was worth trying, but she shook 
her head and said it would be just like Mabel 
to join the other side, so she could develop their 
intellects. Then her face brightened and she 
jumped; so I saw that she had another idea. 
She did, too. She said I might tell Mabel she 
could get a feeding-tube, and use it on Maudie 
if she wanted to. Maudie said she had won- 
dered how a person felt when she was fed through 
a tube, and now she was going to get one right 
off and find out. She said she knew Mabel 
would be simply delighted to try such an ex- 
periment. Mabel was going to be a doctor, so 
she’d have to know about it sometime, and it 
might as well be now. 

I wasn’t very enthusiastic at first. It seemed 
to me like what Sister Irmingarde calls ‘‘an ir- 
relevant detail.” But I knew Mabel Blossom 
would join any society in the world for the sake of 
trying a medical experiment on some one, so I 
told Maudie the tube was surely the quickest 
way of getting to Mabel. Wasn’t that bright? 
Maudie laughed hard; she doesn’t always. We 
put Mabel’s name on our list without waiting. 
So now we had three members — a president 
(Maudie, of course); a vice-president (Mabel); 
and a secretary (me). Just then Janet Tre- 
lawney knocked at the door and came in, and as 

II 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


soon as we mentioned our club she joined it 
without waiting for any details, because she liked 
us better than she liked Kittie. We were glad 
she didn’t insist on having an olEce, because 
there weren’t any left; but we gave her a glass 
of ginger ale and a cookie to celebrate on. There 
was really something to celebrate, for, you see, 
we had four members, the same as Kittie had, 
and her club was a whole hour older than 
ours. 

You’d better believe the next twenty -four 
hours were fevered ones. Whenever we saw a 
girl alone anywhere we appealed to her reason 
and got her to join St. Catharine’s suffragettes. 
Janet Trelawney caught one girl in a bath- 
tub, and wouldn’t leave her till she promised 
to join; and Maudie Joyce gave her best coral 
chain to a new girl, to convince her reason. 
It did, too, though she had half promised Kittie 
to join the antis. All I did was to appeal to 
the girl’s reasons and read my stories to them; 
and they were so proud of being seen seated be- 
neath the trees with a real author that they 
joined, ‘‘not single spies, but in battalions,” as 
Shakespeare says. I got nine one Saturday, so 
you can see how a love for good literature is 
fostered in our convent school. Betweentimes 
we made banners with “Votes for Women” 


12 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


on them. Mabel Blossom was with us by this 
time. She joined just as soon as we mentioned 
feeding Maudie through the tube. Before that 
her mind seemed to be ‘‘clouded with a doubt,” 
like King Arthur’s. 

Perhaps you think Kittie James was idle all 
this time. She was not. The very moment Kittie 
heard about our club she began to work like mad 
to make hers bigger. She was unreasonable 
about it, too, and instead of seeing that we had 
a right to our own sacred convictions, Kittie 
thought we got up our club to kill hers. She 
hardly spoke to us on the campus at first, but 
pretty soon she saw how silly this was, especially 
as it made her miss lots of fun that had nothing 
to do with suffrage clubs. So she began to drop 
into my room again in the evening, the way she 
always had, but she wore such an impatient and 
busy look that it got on Maudie’s nerves. 

I am very broad-minded and just, so I can’t 
help admitting that Kittie’s club was really a 
success, after all. Her sister, Mrs. George 
Morgan, sent her lots of advice about it, and told 
Kittie everything the Chicago club did; and her 
brother-in-law, George Morgan, was tremen- 
dously interested and made heaps of suggestions. 
Kittie took them, too, and made her club 
socially exclusive, and had parties, and things 

13 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


to eat, even if she couldn’t eat them herself. 
Mabel Muriel pointed out to Kittie, very po- 
litely, that this was no reason why other girls 
shouldn’t eat, and Kittie saw it that way at last, 
though Mabel Muriel said to see Kittie stand 
around and look at the food as it disappeared was 
enough to ruin one’s appetite. Of course our 
clubs were making life very gay; for when we had 
a tea, the antis gave a reception, and when they 
had a musicale, we had an authors’ reading and 
I read a story. It all took up so much time that 
Sister Irmingarde got nervous and began to 
make pointed remarks about study; but Maudie 
told her we were merely girding on our armor 
for the vital struggle on life’s grim battle-field. 
After that Sister Irmingarde didn’t seem to be 
able to say anything for a few minutes, though 
we could see she was impressed. 

Then, all of a sudden, the way dramatic 
things happen in books, the crisis came. Kittie 
James challenged Maudie to a suffrage debate! 
She said we could have it in the study-hall, and 
both clubs could come, and some of the other 
students and Sisters. She said we could have a 
jury to decide which side won, and give a silver 
cup to the winner. She said the jury was George 
Morgan’s idea, and the cup was hers — but I knew 
that before she told us. Imagine Kittie James 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


thinking of a jury! She told me afterward, with 
her own lips, that she thought we should have to 
borrow one from a court-room in Chicago, and 
she asked George to manage it, because he is a 
lawyer. George didn’t. He said some of the 
Sisters would do. So we asked Sister Edna 
and Sister Irmingarde and Sister Estelle, and they 
all accepted. Then we ordered programmes, 
and flowers, and lemons and sandwiches, and 
other important things, and for days and days 
we were so busy we didn’t stop to decide who was 
going to debate. When we asked Kittie she said 
very coolly that she was going to do it for her 
side, but if Maudie didn’t feel up to doing it her- 
self, she could ask some one else to represent our 
club. Kittie said she thought the president 
ought to do it, so she was going to do her duty; 
but she didn’t want her decision to influence 
Maudie in any way. 

I wish you could have seen Maudie’s face, and 
Mabel’s, when Kittie said that. I suppose 
mine looked funny, too, but of course I couldn’t 
see mine. When Maudie could speak, she said 
she would represent her club, and that, as Kittie 
was very young and inexperienced, and ought to 
have every advantage, she could begin or finish — 
Maudie didn’t care which. Kittie said she 
would end the debate, and she bowed to us all 
‘ IS 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


and went away, leaving the loudest silence be- 
hind her that I ever heard. 

The gentle reader cannot understand how 
strange it was, because the gentle reader doesn’t 
know Kittie James. But we girls did, and to 
think of Kittie making a speech, and trying 
to express thoughts! I just simply haven’t 
got far enough in my literary art to describe 
our emotions. I don’t believe even Shake- 
speare could do it, or Henry James. Why, the 
first days Kittie was at St. Catharine’s, she 
came to my room one night and woke me up to 
ask me why it was that she always felt so much 
sleepier in the morning than when she went to 
bed at night. She said sometimes she couldn’t 
sleep at night, but she could always sleep after 
the bell rang at six in the morning. She said 
she had been wondering about it, and couldn’t 
understand. Another time she interrupted 
Maudie, when she was writing an essay one night, 
to ask her why folks felt homesick when they were 
away from home. She stayed and talked about 
it a long time. She said her stomach felt as if 
she were dropping from the top floor of a high 
building in a dreadfully fast elevator, and she 
wanted to know why that was. Finally, Maudie 
and I told Kittie not to waste her time trying to 
think, but to come right to us when anything 

i6 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


puzzled her. And she always did, until now. 
Now she was being a leader of thought and 
patronizing Maudie Joyce! 

Maudie had been working on some new ban- 
ners with ‘WoTES FOR Women” on them, for 
we were planning to have an open-air demon- 
stration on the campus the next day. But 
Maudie put the banners down the very minute 
Kittie left, and went ofF to write her debate. 
I knew by the look in her eye that her proud 
spirit was stirred to its depths, and I felt sorry for 
Kittie. Kittie wasn’t a bit sorry for herself, 
though. Mabel Blossom was so much interested 
in the challenge that she followed Maudie to her 
room, and told her she needn’t eat through the 
tube until the day after the debate, though we 
had already fixed the tube day, before we knew 
about the debate. You’d better believe Maudie 
was glad to postpone it. The tube was going 
to be heroic, but not intellectual, of course. 

Every day from then to the day we had the 
debate, Kittie James went around the halls 
looking important and murmuring to herself. 
She’d get off on the banks of the river that runs 
through the convent grounds, and put pebbles 
in her mouth and practise oratory, like a man 
I read about somewhere. Finally she swal- 
lowed a pebble by accident and had to stop, so 

17 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


we had some peace. It was time, too, for I was 
getting dreadfully tired of hearing, ‘‘I say to you, 
students of St. Catharine’s Academy,” coming 
from all the nicest nooks on the grounds. I think 
Maudie would have had to go to the infirmary in 
a day or two more, she was getting so overwrought. 

We were all pretty edgy by this time. If you 
have delicate nerves in your fingers, you know 
how perfectly awful you feel when you try to 
pare a peach. That’s about the way every 
suffragette at St. Catharine’s felt when an 
“anti” came round where she was. As for our 
lessons. Sister Irmingarde told me with her own 
lips that if I didn’t do better during the coming 
month she would be reluctantly forced to change 
her mind about my ability as a student. You’d 
better believe that stirred me up! I dropped 
everything at St. Catharine’s except study and 
suffrage. When the other girls had “spreads” 
in their rooms, Mabel Muriel Murphy and I were 
studying in our rooms with wet towels on our 
heads; for Sister Edna had reproached Mabel 
Muriel, too. But when there was suffrage or 
anti-suffrage going on, we were both at our 
posts, like the boy on the burning deck. For 
by this time it was a vital, burning issue, as the 
newspaper said, and was disrupting the girls, just 
as Maudie had thought it would. 

i8 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


The evening of the debate came at last. We 
had it in the assembly-hall right after supper, 
and Sister Irmingarde and Sister Edna and Sister 
Estelle were the jury, as they had promised to be. 
The anti girls were all on the left side, and we 
suffragettes sat on the right; and on the platform 
there was a speakers’ rostrum, with a glass of 
water on it. When I saw those three nuns lined 
Up in their chairs, and some other Sisters in the 
audience, I felt sorry for Kittie and Maudie. 
Sisters, especially the Sisters who teach us, make 
a very critical audience, and we girls had often 
indeed observed that they had a strange, cramp- 
ing effect on our style — the kind one’s family 
has. Both Maudie and Kittie looked nervous, 
I thought, and dreadfully serious. Kittie wore 
her newest dress — one her sister had sent her the 
week before — and Maudie had on a new em- 
broidered blouse. They were pale but firm. 

Maudie began, and, dear me! wasn’t I proud 
of her 1 Maudie has one fault, and I have pointed 
it out to her freely, like a true literary artist to 
whom art comes before all. She uses too many 
big words, and is what Mabel Blossom calls 
‘‘highfalutin” in her style. (Mabel has pointed 
this fault out, too.) But she began to debate in 
the simplest, most natural way, so that the 
Minims could have understood her if they had 

19 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


been there. She said afterward that she did 
this because she wanted the antis to grasp her 
meaning. 

Maudie said that the time came to every girl 
when she had to look into the depths of her own 
heart, and make up her mind what her life was 
going to be. Then, when she decided, all she 
had to do was to go ahead and make it that. 
You see how simple that was. The antis began 
to look bored right ofF, but I gave Maudie a smile 
of loving encouragement. She said there were 
only two things a girl could do — she could be an 
ivy and cling to things, or else she could be a 
strong support and let things cling to her. 
Then Maudie drew a long breath and said the 
very best thing any girl could have clinging to 
her was Principles. She waited for that to sink 
in, and we suffragettes applauded. Maudie 
went on to talk about Duty and Responsibility 
and the Community Spirit of Helpfulness. 

Then she started in, in earnest. She said it 
was natural for the slothful and indolent to shirk 
work. She said we saw it done every day by 
some of those around us at St. Catharine’s. 
It was easier to let the world go by, Maudie said, 
than to help to make it move; but, if everybody 
shirked, what would become of progress, and who 
would pass on the torch from hand to hand.f* 
20 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE 

She said butterflies were very pretty to look at, 
but there was no place for them in a beehive. 
They did not help the soul to climb. Kittie 
James stood right up when Maudie said that, 
and tried to speak, but Adeline Thurston pulled 
her down. Maudie said the way to live one’s life 
was not in slothful pleasures, eating ‘^spreads,” 
and neglecting one’s studies, but to join hands in 
a ring of helpfulness that would reach round the 
world. She said it made her feel ’most sick 
sometimes to see opportunities for universal 
brotherhood and the community spirit lost by 
girls who had the priceless advantages of living 
at St. Catharine’s and seeing the example of 
others who took life seriously; and she said love 
should be our guiding principle, and that every 
girl should devote half an hour to the reading of 
the best books every day. Then she told about 
the man who rapped on the door of his beloved, 
and was asked, “Who is there?” and he said, 
“It is I.” But the door didn’t open; and he 
rapped again, and was asked who he was, and 
he said, “It is I,” and still the door didn’t open. 
The third time he said, “It is Thou,” and the 
door opened right oflF. Maudie said that was 
what we must all do — rap at the door and he 
what’s behind it. Then, all of a sudden, she 
sat down, and we girls clapped like mad. The 
21 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 

antis looked at one another and smiled in a tired 
way. 

When Kittie James got -up, I thought she 
looked puzzled. She seemed to be thinking over 
Maudie’s speech, and there was so much in it 
that I guess she didn’t know just where to begin. 
But at last she said the previous speaker had told 
a pretty story, but that it reminded her of an- 
other one about two doors — one with a lady 
behind it, and the other with a tiger, and the 
man rapping at them didn’t know which was 
which; and she said that was the way with a 
good many doors in life, and it was a mistake to 
be the thing inside until you were sure it wasn’t 
a tiger. All the girls laughed at that, and so did 
the three Sisters on the jury. Sister Irmingarde 
looked quite proud of Kittie. Then Kittie 
James asked what would become of the wounded 
if the world was made up entirely of people 
fighting all the time, and she asked how anybody 
could expect to read half an hour a day when 
we had so many other things to do. She said 
it was very pretty to talk about hands joining 
in a big circle all around the world, but some- 
times those hands might be neglecting other 
things they had to do; and she said when it 
came to “spreads” and indolence, she thought 
they were pretty evenly divided among our dear 
22 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


companions. She took up everything Maudie 
had said and answered it, and then, all of a 
sudden, she sat down, too, and we girls looked 
at one another and had a kind of queer feeling — 
as if we were at a picnic, you know, and there 
weren’t any pickles or hard-boiled eggs. Sister 
Edna is always talking about ‘‘an effect of in- 
completeness,” when the girls dress too quickly 
and forget a tie or something. Someway, we 
got that kind of an effect right there. 

In the mean time the jury were talking to- 
gether, and everybody sat very still. At last, 
in about five minutes, Sister Irmingarde stood 
up. She said she had been asked by the other 
members of the jury to give its findings, and she 
said that at first it had not seemed easy. So 
much, she said, had been expressed, and so many 
different ideas introduced. However, she added, 
she and the jury had been given to understand 
before the debate that it was for and against 
suffrage. And all of a sudden I understood 
exactly what had happened. 

Both Maudie and Kittie James had been so 
interested in suffrage, they hadn’t said a word 
about it. They had just stood on the platform, 
throwing out different lines of thought, the way 
conjurers throw out long colored ribbons over an 
audience, and they expected that poor jury to 

23 


3 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


gather up all those threads and make a ball of 
them, because they couldn’t do it themselves. 
Isn’t this a clever way of describing what they 
did? Whenever thoughts like this befall me, 
my chest swells, and I realize how my Art is 
growing inside of me all the time. When I 
wrote my first book, I couldn’t have done this. 
I should merely have said, briefly and plainly, 
that both Maudie and Kittie James, when 
they rose to debate, forgot all about their sub- 
ject ! 

However, Sister Irmingarde was explaining 
this now, and she added that the fact was 
really “something of a relief to the jury,” as the 
Sisters had feared the suffrage issue at St. 
Catharine’s might divert our attention from our 
studies. We had now, she said, “effectually 
dispelled that fear.” Then, with her wonderful 
smile, she concluded: 

“Under the conditions, we, the jury, are not 
prepared to pass upon the suffrage question or 
the issue of the debate. But we are glad to 
testify that the debate has afforded us an hour 
of genuine enjoyment.” 

Wouldn’t that make you proud? It made us 
all so happy that the suffragettes and the antis 
left the room with their arms around one another’s 
necks; and Kittie James and Maudie Joyce got 
^ 24 


WOMAN SUFFRAGE 


up a ‘‘spread” in Maudie’s room that was the 
biggest we have had this year. 

But that night, after the Great Silence fell, 
and all the lights were out, and I lay awake 
wishing I hadn’t eaten that last rarebit, I began 
to wonder if Sister Irmingarde and the jury 
really had been complimenting us. This re- 
flection had not occurred to the other girls — but 
my intuition is deeper than that of their young 
and heedless minds. 

The next morning Maudie came into my room 
while I was dressing. She looked pale and wan, 
so I wasn’t surprised when she sat down in a 
chair and hid her face in her hands. 

“May Iverson,” she said at last, “why didn’t 
you tell me last night that I had made a fool of 
myself?” 

I hesitated. Then I spoke the truth, straight 
from a friend’s loyal heart. 

“I didn’t know it myself,” I said, “till after 
I was in bed. Then, of course, I had to wait.” 

“Do you think all the other girls know it, 
too,” she asked me, “by this time?” 

I nodded and reminded her that Kittie James 
had been a — had forgotten, too. Maudie sat 
for quite a while without a word. Ne’er before 
had I known Maudie Joyce to be too sad for 
speech. Finally she got up. 

25 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


“This ends the clubs, and settles suffrage and 
anti-suffrage at St. Catharine’s,” she said, with 
a slow and terrible grimness. “Can’t you just 
hear all the Sisters and the girls laughing at the 
mere mention of them.^” 

I could. I surely could. I just put my arms 
around Maudie and held her tight. While we 
stood there we heard some girls coming down 
the hall. Their feet were clattering on the 
polished floor, the way horses’ hoofs sound in 
army plays. There must have been five or 
six of them. When they got outside of my door 
they laughed — dreadful, curdling laughs. Maudie 
turned paler. 

“They know I’m here. They saw me come in. 
It has begun,” said Maudie Joyce, setting her 
teeth. 

“Any girl,” she added, in trembling tones — 
“any girl that even mentions the word suffrage 
or anti-suffrage to me is my mortal enemy for 
life. But you may write a story about it. May 
Iverson, for I know how you love to dissect the 
quivering human heart.” 

Then she sat down and told me all her terrible 
sufferings, and how she wanted to die; and I 
knew that my dear, dear friend felt better. 


II 


I WRITE A PLAY 


Saturday afternoon in January 

0 a strange thing happened. I was 
left alone. 

The gentle reader cannot possibly 
— understand how unusual this was, 
so I will explain. Saturday is a 
half-holiday, and we girls have it to ourselves. 
What Mabel Blossom calls “the racking brain- 
strain of the week” is over. We haven’t even 
a study-hour between dinner at one o’clock and 
supper at six. All we have to do is to exercise 
in the gymnasium or out in the grounds, and 
write home letters, and call on dear companions 
in the infirmary and read to them, and clear out 
our bureau drawers and closets, and mend our 
clothes, and practise an hour if we are studying 
music. So usually Mabel Blossom and Maudie 
Joyce and Mabel Muriel Murphy and Kittie 
James drop into my room about half past one, 
and we five girls are together from that time till 
the supper bell rings at six. 

27 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


Other girls come and go. Adeline Thurston 
arrives to read her latest poem to us and have me 
point out its faults, which I do with the noble 
candor of true friendship. Janet Trelawney is 
pretty sure to rush in and out again on her way 
somewhere else, and about four o’clock lots more 
come, full of the beautiful hope that I may have 
a new story ready to read to them. Besides, 
the Minims keep trotting in to have me mend a 
pinafore or sew on a button or something — so the 
afternoon, which the nuns expect us to fill with 
Thought and Communion with our Souls, is 
really interesting. 

But this particular day not a single person 
came near me. At first I didn’t notice it. I 
had thought some beautiful thoughts during the 
week, and I hadn’t had time to write them down. 
I got my note-book and did it then. After that 
I scrubbed my fingers with lemon juice till I 
cleaned off some ink stains that had been there 
since the day before, and I sewed ruching in the 
necks of three blouses. Just as I finished sewing 
in the last piece of ruching the clock struck three, 
and you’d better believe I was surprised. I felt 
‘‘like one who treads alone some banquet-hall 
deserted,” as the poet says. I listened for girlish 
voices and footsteps in the hall. There weren’t 
any. I got up and took off my sewing-apron, 
28 


I WRITE A PLAY 


and put my needle neatly away in the under 
side of the table-scarf, where Sister Harmona 
wouldn’t see it when she made her evening in- 
spection, and I went straight to Maudie Joyce’s 
room. When I got there I rapped, but there 
was no answer. I opened the door and went in. 

Maudie Joyce was sitting at her desk with a 
pen in her hand. Mabel Blossom was sitting 
close beside her, holding a bottle of ink so Maudie 
could put her pen in it when she wanted to. 
They both looked straight past me with glassy 
eyes, like Banquo’s ghost at the party. Well 
did I know what such looks meant. They had a 
plot inside of them; they were producing litera- 
ture. 

I opened the door (I had closed it behind me 
when I entered), and I started to reverently with- 
draw. I was ashamed of the noise my shoes had 
made on Maudie’s floor. Who, indeed, can un- 
derstand the crime of interrupting Art if a fellow 
Literary Artist cannot.? I put my finger on my 
lips and shook my head to show I didn’t expect 
them to speak, and I was ’most over the sill on 
my way out when Maudie addressed me. 

‘'We’re writing a play,” she said, in a hushed 
voice. 

I nodded. Then I closed the door very softly 
and went along down the hall to Mabel Muriel 
29 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


Murphy’s room. I knocked, and Mabel Muriel’s 
voice told me to come in; I went. She was 
sitting on the window-seat, with a towel around 
her head. She had a pen in her hand, and the 
very biggest bottle of ink beside her that I ever 
saw. There were stacks and stacks of paper on 
the floor, and I saw that they were virgin sheets, 
to be filled by Mabel Muriel. I stood by the 
door, holding the knob in my hand. 

“Which is it going to be?” I whispered to 
Mabel Muriel. “A story or a play?” 

Mabel Muriel didn’t answer till she had tied 
another knot in the towel around her head. 
She looked pale and worried, but her lips were 
set the way they were two years ago when she 
decided she would be a lady, like Sister Edna, 
and went to work and made herself one. 

“It’s going to be a play,” she said then, 
doggedly; and I knew it surely was. When 
Mabel Muriel Murphy looked that way, things 
happened. Little did I wot, alas, what those 
things were going to be. I threw her a loving 
kiss, and closed the door and went away. It was 
strange and kind of unsettling to have my school 
companions doing such work without me, and 
without even asking me. It made me have a 
sinking feeling in my stomach. But there was 
one place I knew I could go and find what 

30 


I WRITE A PLAY 


my dear mother calls ‘‘old-time hospitality and 
the true social graces.” Mamma is always 
mourning because there aren’t any social graces 
any more, but she would feel lots better iP she 
ever called on Kittie James. Kittie always acts 
as if one call made a party. She gets up to greet 
you, and she pulls out her best chair, and makes 
tea or chocolate, and stops every now and then 
to hug you. She makes you feel that when you 
came to see her you planted a seed in her heart 
that will blossom into the memory of a noble, 
unselfish deed. 

Kittie’s room is quite a long way from mine 
— a block and a half, really — ofF another hall. 
Usually, when we turn from our hall into Kittie’s, 
we can smell the fudge Kittie is making, and 
many a girl is thus led there by unerring instinct 
who didn’t intend to go near Kittie when she 
started out. But to-day there was no smell of 
fudge or anything else. A terrible suspicion 
clutched at my heart. 

What if Kittie James — but I checked the 
morbid thought. Whatever Kittie James might 
be doing, I felt sure she would not be writing a 
play. That shows how little we know, alas! 
about our very own. Kittie is like my own 
child, for she is two years younger than I am, and 
I have thought all her thoughts for her ever since 

31 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


she came to St. Catharine’s. Yet, when I 
knocked at Kittie’s door, there she was, with a 
geography on her knee, and a great big sheet of 
white paper on the geography, and a pencil in 
her mouth, that she was chewing on as hard as 
she could. Her lips were black from it. She 
jumped up the minute she saw me, and spilled 
the geography and the paper, and started toward 
me, but I checked her with a royal gesture and 
asked if it was a play. Kittie said it was. Then 
she sighed a long sigh and murmured that it 
seemed easy when you watched thpm in the 
theater, but it was strangely different when you 
tried to write things for them to say. Though 
she was polite from instinct, she didn’t really 
seem to know I was there; so I went away. 

After that, there was no sense in going to the 
other girls’ rooms. I knew what they would be 
doing, for anything of that kind spreads in St. 
Catharine’s, when it begins, like measles among 
the Minims. It had, too. I went back to my 
own room, and found little Josie Marshall, one 
of the dearest of the Minims, waiting for me. 
She is eight, but she looks about six, and she has 
great big brown eyes like an angel’s, and dimples 
in her cheeks, and the most adorable expression, 
and there’s hardly a minute of the day when that 
child isn’t doing something she oughtn’t to. 
32 


I WRITE A PLAY 


One nun, Sister Gregory, follows her round most 
of the time. Mabel Blossom says Sister Greg- 
ory has the most interesting life at St. Catha- 
rine’s, and I think she has; but she gets sick every 
little while, and then two other Sisters have to 
take care of Josie. 

Josie got up very politely as soon as I came 
into the room, and asked me to sew a long rip 
in her dress before Sister Gregory saw it. While 
I was doing it I noticed something in Josie’s 
hand, and I asked her what it was. She got red, 
and wouldn’t tell, and held on to it tight; so 
I thought it was a snake or a mouse or a spider, 
or perhaps all of them, wrapped up in a paper to 
frighten Sister Gregory. I made Josie show it 
to me, and at last she opened her hand and held 
out a big sheet of paper, with printed letters 
straggling down the side of it. This is what I 
read : 

"‘Wat ho, cryd the Kink, tak the Princis 

TO THE DUDGEN SELL.” 

I sat down hard. I had to. It was indeed 
well that a chair was near me. Then I took 
Josie’s dimpled hands and drew her to my knee 
and looked deep into her eyes and told her to 
fear not, but to tell me the terrible truth. Was 
she writing a play? 


33 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


Josie cried and said she was, and that Hattie 
Smith was, too, and little Hilda Martin and Ethel 
Catlin. She said they heard that all the big 
girls were writing plays that day, to surprise 
me. (Of course Maudie couldn’t keep the se- 
cret!) Josie said the Minims wanted to surprise 
me, too. I saw then that the plays would have 
to run their course, like whooping-cough, so I 
gave Josie some advice and let her go. I urged 
her to wait nineteen years and finish her play, 
but Josie said she didn’t want to. She went 
away with her dress mended, and I trust I need 
not tell the gentle reader what I did next. I 
wrote a play myself. I thought it would be in- 
teresting to do it while the rest were trying to, 
and it was. But I didn’t finish it that afternoon. 
I gave it some more time, afterward. 

Kittie James dropped her play the next week. 
She said she had finished the beginning of the 
first act and then she lost interest in it. Maudie 
Joyce and Mabel Blossom finished two acts. 
Their play was going to have five acts altogether, 
so Maudie wrote the first and Mabel wrote the 
second. After that they had such entirely different 
ideas about the third act that they had to give 
up the whole thing, and they hardly spoke to 
each other for a week. They both came and 
talked to me about it, but I was too busy to take 
34 


I WRITE A PLAY 


much interest in their childish prattle. I was 
writing my own play, and was almost at the end 
of my third act. If only I had known what to 
do then, I could have finished it. But I didn’t, 
so it languished, and my heroine did things I 
didn’t want her to do, and of course I got low 
in my mind and gloomy and morbid, the way any 
literary artist would when the leading character 
in a play sits down on a plot and obscures it. 

While I was wandering o’er the campus one 
day with Mabel Blossom, Kittie James came 
running toward me, waving a letter above her 
head. Mabel and I were trying a thrilling 
experiment in psych-analysis. You know what 
that is. Some scientific person utters one word 
to you, and you utter the word it makes you 
think of. Then the scientific person knows every 
single secret of your soul. We had read an 
article about it in a magazine, so we tried it 
and found it was perfectly true. For instance, 
Mabel gave me the word pig, and I said pen 
without hesitating an instant. That showed 
her I was an author. Don’t you see? If I 
hadn’t been, I might have said sty. 

We were very much excited and didn’t want 
to be interrupted, but Kittie got to us, out 
of breath, and read her letter aloud, between 
gasps. It was from her brother-in-law, George 
35 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 

Morgan, and this is what he wrote. I have it 
yet, among my very dearest treasures, and I 
could get it and copy it if I needed to, but 
I don’t. I know its beautiful words by heart: 

Dear Kittie, — Josephine and I think it’s about 
time you had a rest and some innocent pleasure, so 
we want you to come to us Friday night and stay 
till Monday. Bring May Iverson with you. Tell 
May to bring her play. She can read it to us on the 
way from the station. If it’s as good as her stories, 
I don’t want to wait any longer than that. Tell 
May I have read Shakespeare, Henry James, Tur- 
genieff, and Laura Jean Libbey, and she can take it 
from me — she has them beaten to a frazzle. 

I’ll meet you at the train Friday night at six. 
Josephine is writing Reverend Mother to-day, so it’s 
sure to be all right. 

Your affectionate brother, 

George. 

You can imagine our emotions — especially 
mine. Even Mabel was excited. Ofttimes I 
have told the reader how desolate is the Artist’s 
soul; but in that glorious moment it seemed that 
if there were only me and George Morgan in the 
world, there would be people enough. Then 
I thought of Josephine, his wife, so I added her 
and Kittie; but only out of politeness, and not 
because I needed them. 

3b 


I WRITE A PLAY 


True to his plighted word, George was waiting 
for us at the station when our train got in. I 
had my play in my traveling-case, and two new 
stories, and three plots to tell him besides. But 
I decided not to read the play to him in the 
automobile on the way from the station, as there 
might be disturbing noises in the streets. I ex- 
plained this to him as soon as we arrived, and he 
agreed with me. He said, very seriously indeed, 
that we couldn’t be too careful about plots, 
and that it would be simply awful if the chauf- 
feur heard my plot and wrote a play of his own 
on it the next day. He said the newspapers 
were full of such sad instances. He took us 
both that night to hear a perfectly beautiful 
concert. Of course I thought about my Art 
every minute I was there. Music has charms 
to soothe the savage soul, but few realize how 
much it helps with plots, too. I thought of 
five. 

The next morning at breakfast George said 
he had a serious problem to decide, and he wished 
we would help him. He said he intended to give 
us most of his time while we were his guests, and 
to fill the days and evenings with pleasing 
diversions; so he and Josephine were going to 
take us to the matinee that afternoon, and to 
the theater again in the evening. But he said 
37 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


he was a little doubtful about what to do for us 
that morning, because there were two claims 
of equal interest. He said it just that way. 
Then he added that one of the plans was to take 
us out on the South Side and let us look at a man 
who had never written a play. He explained 
that we would have to go that morning or not at 
all, because undoubtedly by afternoon the man 
would have begun a play. Kittie said the man 
would not interest her at all; she knew lots of 
folks who had never written plays. But all of a 
sudden she remembered St. Catharine’s, and a 
heavy silence fell on her, and I asked Mr. Mor- 
gan what the other thing was. 

He said it was to see the rehearsal of a real 
play one of his friends had written. It was 
being rehearsed at a down-town theater, and he 
had permission to go at ten o’clock and take us, 
but he added politely that, of course, he didn’t 
want to bore us. Then he laughed and told me 
they wouldn’t need electric lights in Chicago 
that night if my eyes stayed the way they were. 
I was holding on to my chair with both hands so 
I wouldn’t jump. I never felt so excited in my 
life. To see real actors and actresses, in a real 
theater, practising on a real play — well, I won’t 
say any more about it, but the reader can 
imagine the thoughts I thought. 

38 


I WRITE A PLAY 


I asked George if the author of the play would 
be there, and he said we might be able to find 
him if we gave all our time to it and looked long 
and earnestly. He asked Josephine if it would be 
well to make the occasion a sporting event by 
offering a prize for finding the author, or letting 
us hunt for him, like Easter eggs; but I said at 
once that Fd rather see the play, and Kittie said 
she would, too. Then Josephine told George 
to behave while we were gone, and we raced off 
to get our hats and coats. 

I will not pause to describe the crowded streets 
or the prancing steeds and well-dressed throngs 
we saw as we went our way. Kittie and I didn’t 
like their clothes very much. Besides, when I 
get deep into my plot I always want to go right 
on down. If you don’t, it’s like offering a baby 
a bottle and suddenly dragging him away from 
it to look at a woolly lamb he doesn’t love at that 
supreme moment. At least that’s the way I feel 
when real authors suspend their heroine over 
the terrible chasm by one golden lock, and then 
start in and describe scenery awhile. 

So Kittie and George Morgan and I got to the 
theater as quickly as we could, and George pulled 
a bell in a little side gate, and a cross old man 
opened it for us and looked surprised and dis- 
approving. But George handed him a card, and 
4 39 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


we went down a cement alley and into a dark 
hall, and finally out on a big gloomy stage, with 
ten or twelve men and women on it. They all 
wore coats and hats and seemed cold and sad. 
One woman sat in the middle of the stage, with 
her back close to the footlights, clenching her 
hands and biting her under lip. She had a pale, 
wan face, and looked as if she had Lived, so I 
asked George who she was; but at first he didn’t 
tell me. I think he wanted to let me guess. 
I did afterward, too. There was a red-haired 
man, bald on top, sitting near her, and George 
said he was the stage director, and that in the 
happy, care-free days of old he would have had 
something to do with putting on the play, but 
now we had changed all that. Everybody else 
was sitting, except two women who were reading 
to each other in a hesitating way, like Minims 
over a primer lesson. Before they had read 
much the wan-faced lady said: 

‘‘Let’s cut all that out; it isn’t needed.” 

So the women who had been reading sat down 
and scratched out whole type-written pages with 
little pencils. I asked George what the pages 
were, and he said they had been “parts,” but 
were now as the snows of yesteryear, whatever 
he meant by that. Other men and women got 
up and read things from type-written sheets of 

40 


MEN AND WOMEN GOT UP AND READ FROM TYPE-WRITTEN SHEETS 







I WRITE A PLAY 


paper. Sometimes they read alone and some- 
times to one another, and once or twice they 
crossed the stage or went to an imaginary win- 
dow for something. One man had grim and 
terrible lines, but he read them like a lost lamb 
bleating. It didn’t matter, for as soon as any- 
body read anything the wan-faced lady said, 
“Let’s cut that out,” and the red-haired man, 
bald on top, did it. 

I was getting interested by this time, for I 
knew now that each man and woman was a 
member of the company, and that the type-writ- 
ten sheets contained their speeches in the play, 
and that the reason they had read them so slowly 
and without any feeling was because they hadn’t 
had time to learn them yet. I asked George if 
the wan lady wasn’t the star, and he said she was, 
and that my intuition was wonderful. I was 
interested in her then, of course, and I studied 
her long and earnestly. I told George she looked 
as if she had drunk deep from the cup of life, and 
George said she had, and all the indications were 
that she would swallow the cup, too, before she 
got through, unless it was chained to the pump. 
Some day I’m going to make a special study of 
George’s language, and write out what it means. 
That will surprise him! Now I haven’t time. 
Besides, I don’t always know myself. I asked 

41 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


him when the rehearsal was going to begin, 
though, and when he told me I grasped his 
meaning without any trouble. 

He said it had begun now, and that when the 
star and her little meat-chopper got through with 
it there would be a quick change from a four- 
act comedy to a four-act monologue. Of course 
I know what a monologue is, so I decided he 
meant that the other actors weren’t going to have 
any lines left. He did mean that, too. Every 
member of the company read long, thrilling 
speeches, and then cut them down to three or 
four words, with the heroine’s name in them. 
The leading man had a perfectly beautiful 
speech, about a crisis in his life, but when the 
star got through cutting it, all he had to say was, 
‘‘Here comes Isabel.” Isabel was the star’s 
name, in the play. 

The girl George said was the ingenue had five 
lovely paragraphs to say in the first act, all 
about the missing will and where her uncle had 
placed it; but when the star had cut her part, 
the only words she had left were, “ ’Tis Isabel.” 
I was sorry for the ingenue, and she seemed 
dreadfully sorry for herself. But the star said it 
didn’t matter, because she could get all that 
about the will into one of her own speeches. 

At last a very serious woman, quite old, got 
42 


I WRITE A PLAY 


up from a chair beside us and went to the middle 
of the stage and read in terribly gloomy tones 
that she wondered if Master would be home 
for dinner. The red-haired man, bald on top, 
jumped at her. 

‘‘Put some ginger into that,’’ he yelled. 
“Come in with a hop, skip, and jump.” 

He took his coat tails in his hands and did it 
for her, and Kittie and I laughed till we cried, 
which was a serious error, for he wasn’t trying 
to be funny at all. He was just showing her how 
to be graceful. The woman said she hoped he 
would excuse her, but in the play she was a faith- 
ful old family servant, of sixty-eight or so. She 
didn’t know she had to dance in, especially as 
she had a very tragic scene in the third act that 
didn’t go with dancing servants at all. The 
star spoke right ofF, biting her lip and clenching 
her hands harder than ever. I never saw anybody 
who acted so nervous — not even Kittie James 
when she is in the infirmary. 

“Let’s cut all that out,” the star said. “I 
don’t see any need of the scene.” 

So they cut it out, and a big blond man rushed 
in and caught the star to his breast and called 
her his darling. Kittie and I were getting 
excited now, for it really looked as if they were 
going to rehearse at last; but the star drew her- 
43 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


self coldly from his embrace, and said she simply 
wouldn’t have him act the scene that way, be- 
cause he would kill it if he did. The man sat 
down and mopped his forehead. 

^‘My God, Miss Jones,” he said, ‘‘I’m your 
husband in this play, and I haven’t seen you 
for two years. You appear unexpectedly at a 
crisis in my life, and it seems to me that my 
lines call for some big acting. I can’t accept you 
as if you were a dish of potatoes offered me at 
dinner, can I?” 

The star began to say that she thought his 
scene ought to be cut out, anyway, but George 
Morgan rose and addressed us in grim, incisive 
tones, as real writers would say: 

“Come on, girls,” he said. “Let’s go. I in- 
vited you to a rehearsal, not to an abattoir. 
I won’t sadden your young lives any longer.” 

We were not exactly sad, but we saw that he 
was, and Kittie and I were not sorry to go. It 
had all been so different from what we expected. 
We thought there would be a brilliantly lighted 
stage and beautiful costumes and a thrilling 
play, with us as the only audience. And here 
we had been watching people sit around and 
shiver in their overcoats and jackets, and ever and 
anon rise and say, “But Isabel comes,” or, “Wait 
for Isabel.” They didn’t have to wait for Jsabel 
44 


I WRITE A PLAY 


very long. She was always coming; or if she 
was going we knew she would be right back. The 
star didn’t take the trouble to read her own lines, 
but she was holding a fat book just bursting with 
long speeches, and ever and anon she wrote in 
some more. Sometimes she wrote in lines taken 
from other parts, and sometimes she wrote in lines 
she happened to think of. When she did that 
she would read it to the red-haired man, bald on 
top, and he would laugh if it was funny or drop 
a silent tear if it was sad. Of course that’s just 
my beautiful way of making you understand. 
He didn’t really drop the tear, but you could 
see he wanted to. 

It gave me a queer feeling to see her writing 
things in the author’s play. It was like seeing a 
purse stolen, or a baby slapped, or some other 
low act. I told George Morgan this, when we 
got out into^ the cement alley again, and he look- 
ed at me with a lovely expression in his eyes and 
said I was a trump and he had always known it. 
He added that it was a little trying for the author 
to have the star rewrite her play, especially as 
‘‘her entire vocabulary consisted of sixty words, 
beginning with and ending with ''Lis- 

ten” He said the author knew a great many 
words and tried to use them in the right place, 
so they would mean something, but that the star 
45 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


was ‘‘handicapped by no such limitations.” 
Then he sighed and laughed, and took us to a 
place where we had heavenly French pastry and 
ice-cream, and I forgot the author’s sorrows. 

I remembered them again when George heard 
my play that night and asked me to give him a 
solemn, sacred promise that I would not attend 
a rehearsal of it if it was ever produced. He 
said he could not bear the thought of my anguish 
if I did. I promised, and George looked lots 
more cheerful. Little did I wot, though, how 
soon I would be called upon to live up to my 
thoughtless words. 

The very hour I got back to St. Catharine’s 
Mabel Blossom and Maudie came to see me. 
They had formed a dramatic club, and wanted 
to produce my play. They said they would 
put it into rehearsal at once, and they had elected 
Mabel Muriel Murphy manager, so her rich 
father would send lots of scenery and beautiful 
costumes. They said they were going to let 
Mabel Muriel play the leading part, too, and that 
Maudie would be the lover and Mabel Blossom 
the funny man. They had made all these plans 
without asking me, and lots more besides. They 
talked so fast, and had so much to say, that 
I couldn’t get my breath for a minute. When I 
did I said there was, alas! one terrible obstacle. 

46 


I WRITE A PLAY 


I had given my solemn word to George Morgan 
not to go to any rehearsals of my play, and I 
must keep it. Then I waited for them to groan 
and sink into chairs and say, ‘‘All is lost,” but 
they didn’t. They looked at each other, and 
their faces shone like the twin electric lights over 
the great gate leading into the convent grounds. 
They were so excited that Maudie forgot to be 
tactful. She hugged me hard and said it was 
just lovely that I had promised, because Mabel 
Muriel wouldn’t be manager and star unless she 
had what she called “a free hand.” 

“That means that she wants to do the whole 
thing,” Maudie said, “and she thinks you would 
interrupt and interfere if you were there. She 
said she wouldn’t be stage-manager or star unless 
you promised not to corhe to rehearsals.” 

You’d better believe that hurt my feelings. 
But one of my rules of life is never to let any one 
know she is doing this, so of course I couldn’t 
show it. I said I would think it over, and I went 
off and roamed by the river’s brim, and won- 
dered why folks were born, anyway, and had to 
live, when life was so grim and terrible. Nature 
looked just the way I felt. The river was frozen 
over, and the ground was covered with snow, 
and I couldn’t see a living thing anywhere. It 
was awfully lonely, but kind of quieting, too, and 
47 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


by and by I began to feel better. I realized first 
of all that, even if the girls wanted me dreadfully, 
I simply couldn’t go to my rehearsals, so what 
was the use of fussing? Then I remembered that 
it was my play they wanted to produce, not 
theirs, and this was a compliment, even if they 
hadn’t finished any of theirs and couldn’t. 
Finally, all of a sudden, I thought of a good end 
for my third act, and when that came of course 
I was so happy I didn’t care about anything 
else; for, as any Artist knows. Art is enough, 
and the life that holds it needs naught else. 
It’s lucky it doesn’t, too, for, young as I am, I 
have oft observed that it doesn’t usually get 
much else. 

I went back to the convent with springing 
steps, and as soon as the girls saw me they knew 
all was well, and they .came running. When 
I am happy over my Art my dear companions 
seem like shadow girls, and they know it. So 
they were not surprised when I told them briefly 
they could have the play, but I didn’t want to talk 
any, because I had to finish it right oflp. They 
were grateful and tactful, and walked silently 
by my side to the door of my room, and left me 
there with reverence. I went in and finished the 
play. It was simply beautiful. Every single 
character was killed off* before I got through, 

48 


I WRITE A PLAY 

and they all died young, too. I cried quarts 
over that play. The next morning I gave it to 
the girls, and that’s the last I knew about it till 
I attended the performance, one Saturday after- 
noon, in the small study hall. 

Since I wrote that last line IVe sat for a long 
time with my chin in my hand, wondering if 
I could describe that performance. Now I 
know I can’t. First of all, I would have to dip 
my pen in my heart’s blood, and there wouldn’t 
be enough of that to write it all, and where would 
I get any more? So I’ll just tell what Mabel 
Muriel Murphy did to my play, and then the 
reader can vainly try to imagine how he would 
feel if he had written the play. 

First of all, she had made my five-act tragedy 
into a three-act comedy. 

You would think that would be change enough 
to satisfy anybody, wouldn’t you? But it 
wasn’t enough to satisfy Mabel Muriel Mur- 
phy. 

She had put the fourth act first. 

She had put the second act last. 

She had written the third act over, and changed 
all my characters and situations. 

When the time came for a character to die, 
she had made her dance instead. 

She had cut out all the parts, except her own 
49 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


— ^yards and yards of them — ^just like the lady 
star in Chicago. 

She had put in all the scenes she liked best 
from her own play. 

She had let Maudie Joyce and Mabel Blos- 
som put in all their favorite scenes from their 
play. 

The only reason I knew they were playing my 
play was that the title was the same, and my 
name was under it. 

I stayed and watched that play till it was al- 
most finished. I didn’t want to, but my legs 
wouldn’t carry me out; they felt like paper things, 
and wobbled under me, and I was cold all over. 
Sometimes the audience — there were forty girls 
in the audience — clapped and turned and looked 
at me, and nodded as if they liked the play; 
but I stared straight ahead, with glassy eyes. 
I thought I was dreaming a perfectly terrible 
dream. Toward the end I found I could get 
up, and I did; and I crept out of the room and 
flew along the hall and out of the building and 
across the campus, and on and on, till I reached 
my favorite birch-trees by the river. The ground 
was covered with snow, but I lay right down flat 
and put my face into it and melted yards and 
yards of it — the snow, I mean;. not of my face. 
And I dug my fingers down through the snow 

50 


I WRITE A PLAY 


against the hard ground and groaned. I wanted 
to die, but I knew I couldn’t. 

It was Sister Irmingarde herself who came and 
found me hours later, and put her arm around 
me in the dearest way, and led me to the in- 
firmary and saw that I had a hot bath and hot 
lemonade. She talked to me beautifully, too, 
and said things she had never said to me before, 
about my possibilities and what I could make of 
my character if I tried; and there was no twinkle 
in her beautiful eyes — only kindness and sym- 
pathy for me. She wanted me to forgive Mabel 
Muriel and the other girls, but I couldn’t do it 
yet; I told her that when I was an old, old woman 
I would try to. 

I don’t remember much about the next few 
days. I could just speak politely to the girls, 
and that was all. I couldn’t be friendly, though 
I tried because Sister Irmingarde wished me to. 
She told me they were very unhappy, and I guess 
they were. I made them take my name and 
title off* their play, and I burned my play the 
very next day, with a match, in my wash- 
bowl. 

One morning, four days later, Kittie James 
approached me timidly and handed me a letter, 
and went away crying. The letter was from 
George Morgan, and this is what it said: 

51 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


Dear May, — Kittie has written me about your 
play. It’s hard luck, and I want to say Fm sorry. 
Don’t forget that there are others, and that it’s all 
in the day’s work. It was only a fortnight ago, you 
know, that you and I sat and watched a company 
making a Spanish omelet of my play. So, as a fellow 
playwright, I understand how you feel. But we’ll 
show them, yet! 

Your friend, 

George Morgan. 

Perhaps you think I didn’t cry over that 
letter! I cried till I was sick. And most of all 
because I hadn’t known it was George’s own play 
we were seeing rehearsed! To think I hadn’t 
told him more about how dreadfully sorry I was 
over what they were doing to it! I realized now 
that what happened to him and to me probably 
happens to every one, and that into each play- 
wright’s life some star must fall. Isn’t that 
beautifully expressed— and so sad, too! 

But there was yet time to tell George things. 
I went straight to the reading-room and stayed 
there for hours. I read Gray’s Elegy, and the 
death of Ophelia and Juliet, and Burns’s fare- 
well to Highland Mary, and Sir Walter Raleigh’s 
last letter to his wife, and the death of Little 
Nell, and Napoleon’s last days at St. Helena, and 
parts of David Copperfield (‘‘Never again, O 
52 


I WRITE A PLAY 


Steerforth, to clasp that hand in love and friend- 
ship!’’), and about the battles of Waterloo and 
Leipzig; and I copied all the saddest parts of 
every one of them, to quote where needed. After 
that I thought about my own play. 

Then I wrote to my dear, dear friend and fellow- 
playwright — a letter of sympathy and under- 
standing. 


Ill 


THE REDUCTION CURE FOR KITTY JAMES 


day, during our study -hour, 
;tie James slipped a note into 
Rhetoric and then handed the 
)k to me. It was just after the 
s had ‘‘produced’’ my play, so 
course I wasn’t speaking to any 
of them. But Kittie was not as much to blame 
as the others; therefore I read the note. These 
were its enigmatic words: 

“Meet me under the big willow at five o’clock. 
Sit down beside me, but don’t speak. Just 
watch what happens.” 

I tore up the note quickly, so Sister Irmingarde 
wouldn’t be disappointed if she saw it and tried 
to get it, and I glanced at Kittie. Her sweet 
face was pale and wan. I raised my eyebrows 
and looked politely interested, but Kittie shook 
her head and kept her eyes on the printed page, 
which was indeed the last place where one would 
expect to find them. At the end of any study- 
54 



THE REDUCTION CURE 


hour Kittie James can tell with unerring accuracy 
what every girl in the study-hall wears, and 
whether she has anything new on, or has done 
her hair in a different way; but Kittie never 
knows her lessons, and rarely does she know 
what the book in front of her is, though she keeps 
one there for looks. 

Kittie told me once with her own lips that she 
plans all her clothes and her convent ‘‘spreads’' 
during study-hours, and the clothes of the children 
she is going to have some day, and how her 
future home will look, and the kind of ties her 
husband will wear. She said she invented some 
“dream ties” for him once — pale and pink, with 
pansies and forget-me-nots painted on them — 
and gave them to her brother-in-law, George 
Morgan, to see how they would look “in the flesh.” 
George didn’t wear them. He said the dream 
was one to appall the strongest soul, and that it 
had given him a permanent and incurable in- 
somnia. He said it just that way. He told 
Kittie that every night afterward for weeks, just 
as he began to sink into an innocent slumber, he 
felt himself bound hand and foot by painted 
family ties, and the awful horror of it always 
woke him up, bathed in a cold perspiration. 
Kittie felt badly, and tears came into her eyes 
when she told me about it. She hadn’t meant to 
55 


5 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


make him suffer. But she was glad, since some one 
had to, that she had learned the truth in time, 
and that it was George who felt that way, and 
not Algernon. Algernon is what his name is 
going to be. 

Of course this hasn’t anything to do with the 
other experience of Kittie’s, which I am about 
to relate if the gentle reader will wait a minute. 
I put it in to throw light on my heroine’s charac- 
ter, the way Arnold Bennett does in his books, 
when nothing much happens, and you think 
nothing’s going to, and all the time the human 
soul is being dissected before your poor, blind 
eyes. Now I will return to Kittie in the study- 
hall, pale and wan. There will be more refer- 
ences to literary topics and public questions in 
my future work, though. As I grow more ma- 
ture in my art I see how wrong it is to make my 
stories a source of entertainment only, when they 
might be a source of knowledge, too. Besides, 
no merely entertaining literature can Live. 

I met Kittie under the willow at five o’clock. 
It was not easy, for I had other things to do. 
But who would fail a dear companion with secrets 
to tell.? Our convent orchestra was rehearsing 
for the Commencement programme, and of 
course we were going to play the overture to 
‘‘Zampa.” I had to lead on the piano, and I 
S6 


THE REDUCTION CURE 


was expected to practise my piano part hard^ 
every day, from half-past four to half-past five, 
in one of the little music-rooms olF the main hall. 
Though I have a light step and am very swift 
in my movements, it was not easy to get away, 
for Sister Amelia, one of the teachers of music, 
has a dreadfully suspicious nature, and walks 
up and down the hall, listening to be sure we are 
all at work. The din is frightful when we are. 
‘"Zampa” from one room, the “Spring Song” 
from another, Brahms’s waltzes and “Parsifal” 
from others, bits of Chopin and Beethoven and 
Grieg from the rest — dozens of rooms and dozens 
of pianos going like mad on different things. Sis- 
ter Amelia looks quite nervous sometimes, after she 
has stood it all day. Naturally, I couldn’t be 
practising “Zampa” and sitting out in the 
grounds with Kittie at the same time, so I com- 
promised. I got Janet Trelawney, who plays 
beautifully, to go to my music-room and practise 
“Zampa,” so Sister wouldn’t be disappointed 
when she went by; and I stole off to Kittie and the 
drooping willow.J 

Kittie was ’most as drooping as the willow 
when I reached her. She was sitting alone on 
the bench as I approached, and she rose and 
bowed (Kittie has the most beautiful manners!) 
and motioned me to sit beside her. I did, 
57 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


without a word, and we waited for five minutes, 
and nothing happened. 

I began to get restless. I am nervous and high- 
strung, like all literary artists, and sitting down 
without talking rarely interests me. There are 
so many things to do and life is so short. Kittie 
saw my feet moving, and she made a sign, eager 
and imploring, for me to wait. I waited, and 
I began to think of a book I had been reading, 
and how they carried the heroine out dead 
(Eve only read that description three times, 
but I know it by heart), and I forgot about 
Kittie and ‘‘Zampa” and other unimportant 
things, as I always do when my mind is on Art. 

Suddenly Kittie nudged me, and I saw Mabel 
Muriel Murphy coming toward us. I started up 
to go away, for Mabel was the girl who was the 
stage-manager for my play, and did the very 
worst things to it, and changed it from a five-act 
tragedy to a three-act comedy, and made all 
the characters dance instead of dying when their 
last sad hour came. Kittie caught my arm and 
pulled me down on the bench again, and I re- 
membered her note and sat still and waited, 
though terrible doubts assailed me. Was Kittie 
James trying to force me to be friends again with 
Mabel Muriel? If she was, I knew that I must 
root Kittie, too, from my crushed and empty heart. 

S8 


THE REDUCTION CURE 


Mabel Muriel came on with slow and solemn 
steps, as if she were following a bier. Her head 
was bowed on her breast, but I guess she caught 
a glimpse of us out of the corner of her eye. 
She faltered when she saw me, as well indeed she 
might, and one foot started backward by in- 
stinct. She drew it forward again with terrible 
determination, and came straight up to us, and 
handed Kittie a little piece of paper. Then she 
walked away. There was something strangely 
impressive about it. I felt a cold chill running 
slowly down my spine, prickling as it passed. 
That’s alliteration, and I’m glad I thought of it. 
Such touches are what make style. 

Kittie opened the note and looked at it. Then 
she handed it to me. Its words were few and 
simple. They read : 

Try the lemon cureT 

My mind is very quick, and everybody says 
my intuition is simply wonderful; but when I 
read that note I sat and stared at Kittie like any 
ordinary, stupid girl. She had her finger on her 
lips, to show I was not to speak. Mabel Muriel 
was already disappearing among the trees, but I 
saw Kittie glance quickly in another direction, 
and I looked, too, and there was Maudie Joyce 
coming along with measured tread. I could 
almost hear Chopin’s Funeral March as I watched 
59 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


her, and I could almost see the dead leaves 
whirling over the new-made grave, the way they 
do in the last pages of the sonata. Sister Harmona 
says she can’t hear them whirl when I play that 
sonata, and I don’t wonder. I can’t always, 
myself; but I hear them plainly when Paderewski 
or Sister Cecilia plays it. 

Maudie hesitated, too, when she saw me, so 
I realized that, whatever was going on, the girls 
had not expected me to be in it. I was, though, 
and this pleased me. I made up my mind 
that very minute to stand by Kittie to the 
death. Maudie pulled herself together, walked 
straight up to us with her head bent, hand- 
ed Kittie a note, and went away. The note 
said: 

Buttermilk will do it^ 

Kittie raised her lily hand to show that I was 
not to speak. I wouldn’t have had time to, 
anyway, for Adeline Thurston was already 
stalking toward us, her eyes on the ground and 
her hands crossed on her breast. She uncrossed 
them long enough to hand Kittie a note. Then 
she went away as the others had done, except 
that she seemed to feel even worse. Of course, 
Adeline, being a poet, looked worse than the 
others, too. Kittie and I read her note together, 
for I simply could not wait. It said: 

6o 


THE REDUCTION CURE 


Roll on the floor flfty times every morning and 
fifty times every night, 

By this time I knew I was assisting at some 
grim, mysterious rite, so I began to enjoy my- 
self. But Kittie’s face was getting redder and 
redder, and her mouth looked like a little pink 
hyphen in her face. That means it looked thin 
and straight, the way a hyphen looks. I hate 
to explain, but Fd hate worse to have the gentle 
reader miss it. 

A few minutes la er Mabel Blossom came along 
exactly as the other girls had come, with pur- 
poseful and mournful mien, and handed Kittie 
a note. It was simple and direct. It said: 

** Stop eating'^ 

Before any more girls had time to come, 
Kittie took me by the hand and led me to a 
shrine away olF in another part of the convent 
grounds. We sat down and waited. Before 
five minutes had passed, little Josie Gregory, 
one of the Minims, arrived and handed Kittie 
a note. The handwriting was Jennie Hart- 
well’s, and it read: 

^‘Walking works wonders, 

Kittie tore the note up, and threw the pieces 
on the ground and put her heel on them. Almost 
before she had done it, another Minim came with 
another note, and after that they came and came 

6i 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


and came, like leaves in Vallombrosa, as the poet 
says. That means there were a lot of notes. 
Sometimes a Minim brought them, and some- 
times it was an older girl; but, whoever it was, 
she came slowly and sadly, as if to take one last 
look at the dear face within. You know what 
I mean. I don’t want to put it any more plainly, 
for, indeed, it is an awful thought; but it is the only 
one that expresses the way those messengers acted. 

The little Minims were the worst of all. After 
they delivered their notes they stood and stared 
with round, wondering eyes, as if they were 
waiting for something dreadful to happen. 
They were, too; for, as we learned afterward, 
Mabel Blossom had told them with her own lips 
that if they waited long enough, perfectly quiet, 
with their eyes fixed on Kittie James, maybe 
they would see her burst! We didn’t know this 
then, but it made us feel dreadfully nervous to 
see them standing round us in a circle, and 
closing in like the wolves near the Russian 
woman’s sleigh when she threw out her children 
to save herself. I was thinking about the Rus- 
sian woman, and how dreadful she was, as well as 
about Kittie — I’ve always been able to think of 
different things at the same time — ^when Kittie 
suddenly rose to her feet and threw her arms 
over her head and shrieked. 

62 


THE REDUCTION CURE 


She is a nervous child, and when she begins 
to shriek she can’t stop. So she went on doing 
it and getting hysterics as fast as she could get 
them, and the Minims shrieked, too, and scattered 
in every direction, and then watched us from 
behind trees, waiting for what they thought was 
coming. I rubbed Kittie’s hands and talked to 
her, and pretty soon I got her quieted down. 
Then I took her to my room, with the notes she 
hadn’t had time to tear up, and finally I got 
the whole story out of her. This was it: 

Maudie Joyce and Mabel Blossom had made 
up their minds that Kittie James was getting too 
fat, so they began to talk to her about it. At 
first Kittie thought it was a joke and laughed at 
the things they said. But pretty soon they got 
the other girls into it, and everybody talked 
to Kittie about getting stout, and told her it 
dulled her brain, and advised her to stop. They 
said the way to do it was to diet. Kittie got 
dreadfully tired hearing about it, for she loves 
food more than almost anything else. After 
that, when they didn’t stop, she got angry, and 
finally, when they still kept it up, the terrible 
thing happened that comes sometimes in the 
case of gentle, beautiful natures like hers — she 
got stubborn. She told the girls if they didn’t 
like to look at her they could go and look at 
63 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


some one else and leave her alone, and she said 
she would get fatter than ever, just to show them. 
Then they began to send her notes and to get 
the whole school to help them. You see, it 
had got to be a kind of a game, and a terribly 
funny joke to every one but Kittie. 

All this had been going on for more than a 
week, and I hadn’t known it. But that was 
because I was hardly speaking to any of the 
girls, after the way they had treated my play. 
They came and talked to me every day and tried 
to make up, and I answered direct questions 
courteously, and then excused myself and left 
them. Naturally they didn’t like it, either — 
and of course they had got into mischief and 
were driving Kittie James into hysterics. 

I made Kittie some tea and gave her two big 
pieces of chocolate cake and some strawberry 
jam and some fudge, and we read the notes and 
talked and decided what we would do. I had 
a lovely time planning. Of course it was my 
duty to stand by Kittie, who was one against 
many; and it is a wonderful experience, and all 
too rare, to have duty go hand in hand with de- 
light, as real writers would say if they were 
clever enough to think of it. It is surprising how 
rarely they do think of things like that. Oft, 
indeed, I see places in their work where I could 
64 


THE REDUCTION CURE 


have said things better. But I am forgetting 
my heroine, which Sister Irmingarde says is one 
of my most serious literary faults. I notice it 
in Henry James’s stories, too, for pages and pages; 
therefore, I don’t worry over it as much as I do 
over my other faults. 

As soon as I began to think about Kittie’s 
problem, Kittie stopped trying to. She is a girl 
it is a pleasure to help. She sat still and ate 
chocolate cake, and gained two pounds more, 
she told me the next day, and I thought and 
thought, till the solution of our problem flashed 
upon me. To tell Kittie was the next thing, 
and I did it. 

That night we ‘‘planned a campaign,” as papa 
says, that would show the girls the error of their 
ways. While we were in the most interesting part 
of it the lights went out and the Great Silence 
fell, and I had to creep alone through the pitch- 
black convent halls from Kittie’s room to mine, 
a block and a half away. It was not pleasant, 
in that awful darkness and silence, full of memo- 
ries of beautiful dead nuns. Every time I find 
myself alone at night in those long, ghostly 
corridors, that is what I feel around me — the 
nuns who have died, silently keeping step with 
me. I can almost see their black veils flutter, 
and hear the soft click of their rosary beads 
65 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


one against the other. It does not frighten me; 
the memory of them is too sweet for that. But 
it makes me feel very solemn, and I am glad 
when I get back to my own room and see the 
stars shining in through my windows. 

The next day Kittie James and I formed a 
secret society — the Epsilon Sigma; and by sun- 
set every girl at St. Catharine’s knew about it 
and was crazy to join it. But we didn’t let 
them. We confined the membership to ten 
girls — eight besides ourselves. Need I add that 
we chose them from among the girls who had 
had nothing to do with my play or with reducing 
the weight of Kittie James.? We did. We took 
in Janet Trelawney first. She had been in the 
infirmary for three weeks, so neither of us had 
anything against her. Then we gathered in 
the most brilliant of the other girls — outside of 
our old set — and I can tell you they were proud 
and glad when we asked them. I never saw 
girls so happy and grateful. And of course all 
the other girls stopped bothering Kittie, right off, 
in the hope that we would take them into the 
Epsilon Sigma. 

We got permission to go into town in the 
afternoon, and we ordered the badges from Mr. 
Whitten — “our genial fellow-townsman in the 
jewelry business,” the local newspaper calls 
66 


THE REDUCTION CURE 


him. He made them in three days, and they 
were too sweet — gold ovals, with the monogram 
E.S. on them, and pins in the back to fasten 
them to our blouses. Then we spent a lot of 
money for food. 

That night we had the most gorgeous banquet 
in the history of St. Catharine’s. It was in 
honor of our secret society. Before eating we 
initiated the new members, and you’d better 
believe they were ready for the banquet after 
we got through with them. We had cake and 
cold chicken and jelly and fudge and pickles and 
ice-cream and lemonade and Welsh rarebit and 
potted tongue and deviled crabs and French 
pastry. We put blankets over the transom of 
my room, so the Sisters wouldn’t be disturbed 
by our lights, and we ate and ate, and talked in 
whispers, and invented a secret grip and a pass- 
word, and I never had so much fun in my life. 
Every girl there was just bursting with food and 
pride because she was with us. 

The next morning Kittie James went to the 
infirmary and stayed two days. It was very 
inconvenient, when we had so much to do, but 
Kittie said the banquet was worth it. In the 
mean time I wrote mama to send me a box, 
and I told her what to put in it — cold ham and 
turkey and cream cake and jelly cake, and other 
67 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


things just as good. It came the day after 
Kittie got well, so we had a banquet that night 
to celebrate her return to our midst. The very 
next day poor Kittie was in the infirmary again, 
and the nuns couldn’t understand it; but Kittie 
didn’t mind going. She said the second banquet 
was even more worth it than the first. As soon 
as she was able to sit up she wrote to her sister, 
Mrs. George Morgan, asking for a box, and it 
came right away; so Kittie gave a banquet the 
night she left the infirmary, and the following 
morning she went back to it — to the infirmary, I 
mean. She was there four days that time, 
and the convent infirmarians began to talk about 
sending for a specialist to examine her. She 
got better, though, and by the time she was 
out George Morgan sent me a box, so the 
Epsilon Sigma was ready for another ban- 
quet. 

George is my very dearest friend — far, far 
dearer than any one else except mama — and 
it is the tragedy of our lives that he wed before 
we had found each other. If I told you what was 
in that box, you’d never believe it. Chickens 
in aspic, and candied fruit, and a five-pound 
box of the richest chocolate creams you ever ate, 
and loads of preserves. Kittie was out of the 
infirmary just in time for that banquet, but the 
68 


THE VERY NEXT DAY POOR KITTIE WAS IN THE INFIRMARY AGAIN 


I 






D 






THE REDUCTION CURE 


next day she was very sick, and the Sisters sent 
to Chicago for the specialist. 

All this time our old friends were not idle. 
They couldn’t be, with every other girl at St. 
Catharine’s talking about those banquets and 
describing them till their mouths watered. 
Janet Trelawney told everybody they were like 
the feasts of Lucullus, that we read about in 
history. The day after the last banquet Mabel 
Blossom and Maudie Joyce and Mabel Muriel 
Murphy came to me together and apologized 
again for what they did to my play. I accepted 
their apology politely. Then I changed the sub- 
ject and talked about the weather. Mabel 
Blossom said the food at the convent table was 
nourishing but monotonous, and I said I didn’t 
remember much about it, because I hadn’t eaten 
any of it lately. 

The girls mentioned the Epsilon Sigma in an 
ofF-hand way, and I preserved a calm silence. 
Finally Mabel Blossom spoke up again in trem- 
bling tones, and asked whether I wouldn’t let 
bygones be bygones. While she was speaking 
Maudie Joyce burst into tears and said they had 
treated my play dreadfully, and that they never 
could forgive themselves, and they had never 
been so unhappy in their lives, and she didn’t 
care a fig for my old banquets or my club, but 
69 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


she did love me and always would, and wouldn’t 
I please forgive her and be natural again. She 
said it all just like that, without stopping, and 
she kept wiping her eyes till her handkerchief 
was a little wet ball. Mabel Muriel Murphy 
was crying, too, by this time, and Mabel Blossom 
looked dreadfully cross, which with her is the 
sign of her deepest suffering. 

I looked at my dear companions, and all of a 
sudden my icy heart melted as if Maudie had 
taken it into her warm, friendly hands; and I 
kissed the girls and told them everything was 
all right, and I meant it. We had a beautiful 
afternoon together — it happened to be Saturday 
— and it was exactly like the dear old days. The 
nuns wouldn’t let me see Kittie; she was too sick. 
I saw her the next afternoon, when she was a 
little better, and told her how I had forgiven the 
girls, and begged her to, and to let them come 
into the Epsilon Sigma. But Kittie wouldn’t. 
She said she had suffered too much, and I guess 
she had. She said if she had to die I could call 
them around her death -bed for a last scene 
of forgiveness; but while there was any hope of 
life she wouldn’t look at them. I knew how she 
felt. I had felt even worse the terrible day of 
the play. 

Kittie was quite sick for almost a week, and 
70 


THE REDUCTION CURE 


when she came back to us I gave a banquet for 
her in my room. It wasn’t a meeting of the 
Epsilon Sigma; it was just a celebration of Kit- 
tie’s recovery. So she let me ask Maudie Joyce 
and Mabel Blossom and Mabel Muriel Murphy; 
and I invited the Epsilon Sigma girls, too, for 
of course we would not desert those who had stood 
by us in our trouble. Kittie sat at my right, and 
during the whole evening the girls kept staring 
at Kittie and me, and then looking at one an- 
other with long, meaning glances. They were 
lovely to her, though, and Kittie forgave them 
before the banquet was over, and everything 
was as jolly as it could be. But every now. and 
then the girls of our old set would begin to speak 
and then stop. I could see that they were dread- 
fully interested in something that they didn’t dare 
to talk about, and Kittie saw it, too. We were 
curious about it, but we didn’t ask any questions. 

The next day Mabel Blossom came to my room 
and sat looking at me for five minutes without 
speaking. She does that sometimes, and usually 
it makes me nervous; but this time it didn’t, for I 
saw there was loving admiration in her eyes. 
There isn’t, always. I went on calmly clearing 
out my bureau drawers, without paying much 
attention to her, and at last she drew a deep 
breath and spoke. 

6 


71 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 

^‘May Iverson,” she said, in thrilling tones, 
‘‘you really are a wonder! I never saw any one 
like you!” 

Before I could ask why she had not discovered 
this long before, the door opened and Maudie 
Joyce and Mabel Muriel Murphy came in. 
They sat down and looked at me, exactly the 
way Mabel Blossom had looked. There was awe 
and also a touch of reverence in their gaze. 
I enjoyed it for a while, but at last I couldn’t 
stand not knowing what it meant, so I asked 
them. They all began to talk at once, but 
Mabel Blossom’s voice rose loud and clear above 
the other two, and finally they stopped. 

“May Iverson,” she began again, “you are a 
wonder!” And she went on to say that in less 
than three weeks I alone had accomplished some- 
thing the entire school had worked on and failed 
in. She told about Kittie James and how they 
had tried to reduce her weight and couldn’t, 
and all the different methods they had used; 
and she said I had simply walked in and had a 
lovely time, and given Kittie a lovely time, and 
eight other girls a lovely time — and done it. 

At first I couldn’t quite understand, but of 
course I didn’t show this; and pretty soon I 
began to see what they meant. Besides, I re- 
membered the way Kittie had looked the day 
72 


THE REDUCTION CURE 


before. I put on a calm, superior expression, 
as if what I had done had been easy. 

‘‘But you don’t know yet how many pounds 
she has lost,” I told them, trying to keep pride 
out of my voice. I didn’t know myself, but they 
did, and they answered like a Greek chorus. 

“Eight-e-e-n!” they said, and they drew the 
word out like molasses candy when you pull it. 
“We asked the infirmarians.” 

I will admit to the gentle reader that I nearly 
fell off my chair when I heard that. Eighteen 
pounds lost in less than three weeks! No wonder 
Kittie James had looked slender and willowy! 

Then my chest swelled with satisfaction, and 
you can see for yourself that it had cause. To 
take Kittie James in hand, and to get eighteen 
pounds off her in three weeks by feeding her with 
everything she loved, was a brand-new idea, 
and it was all my own. I don’t believe any one 
ever thought of it before. Of course, as I strive 
to be honest, even with myself, I will admit 
that I hadn’t really thought it out in detail. 
It was just instinct. But it got results, which is 
all one ought to ask of any idea. I told the 
girls there was more to the matter than they knew, 
which was true. I said the real name of the 
Epsilon Sigma was the Eating Society, which 
was true, too. Then I frowned as if I felt dis- 
73 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


appointed, and I sat thinking hard for a moment, 
and not one of them dared to speak. Finally 
I let my face clear. I felt another instinct 
stirring in me. 

“Eighteen pounds is not enough,” I said, 
firmly. “It’s got to be twenty. I’ll give the 
biggest banquet of all to-night, and invite you 
three girls and Kittie and the Epsilon Sigma. 
We’ll eat all that’s left of George Morgan’s box. 
There’s heaps. By to-morrow Kittie will lose 
the other two pounds.” 

And you’d better believe she did! 


IV 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 

;NCE, when I was a little girl, three 
whole years younger than I am now, 
Sister Estelle wrote this sentence in 
rfiy autograph album: 

‘‘May angels ever guide your pen.” 

Sometimes they do. I can almost feel them 
guiding it; and beautiful flowers of thought 
fall on the snowy pages before me, and I 
write so fast my hand gets covered with ink up 
to the wrist, and I have a dreadful time after- 
ward, with pumice-stone. Even when angels 
are not guiding, though, I usually have two 
beautiful hopes sprouting in my breast when I 
begin my work. One is the hope of making it 
true to life; well do I realize that this is the 
highest art. 

My second hope is that Sister Irmingarde 
will read it aloud to our literary class. She 
does, sometimes, read a girrs work when it 
75 



MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


is very good. She hasn’t read anything of mine 
for ages, though she told me with her own 
lips that several of my efforts ‘^held striking 
examples of what to do and what to avoid in 
fiction.” But I’ve got to write this piece of 
literature without either an angel or a hope. 
I know already that it is not going to be true to 
life, and that Sister Irmingarde is not going to 
read it aloud to the class. And the only example 
in it is Mabel Blossom, who is, indeed, a terrible 
one. 

Not that the chapter isn’t going to be good. 
It’s going to have a ruin in it, and a churchyard, 
and a ghost, and grim, mysterious blood-cur- 
dling happenings. If those don’t make a good 
chapter I don’t know what does. And action! 
There’s so much action that the mere memory 
of all that happened that ne’er-to-be-forgotten 
Hallowe’en night makes me feel tired now! 
As for Mabel Blossom, she’s black and blue yet, 
from the exercise she got. But a story with a 
ghost in it can’t very well be ‘^true to life,” can 
it? And, woe is me! it has wickedness in it, 
too; and Sister Irmingarde shrinks from wicked- 
ness the way a sensitive plant shrinks when you 
put your foot on it. 

You can see how discouraging all this is, but 
I’ve got to write just the same. My art is 
76 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 


before all, and whenever a plot is inside of me it 
has to come out, no matter what it is. Not even 
wickedness can stop me. Only last New-year’s 
Day I wrote this sentence in my resolution- 
book. It was one of seventeen, but it came first: 

“ There is no subject in life that I will not write 
about before I get through^ 

I don’t think I ever made a resolution that 
was so interesting. The more I thought of it, 
the more I liked it. I read it aloud right away 
to Mabel Blossom and Maudie Joyce, and 
Maudie clapped her hands; but Mabel went 
to her room and began to pack her trunk. 
She knew it meant that I would probe deeper 
than ever into her soul, and read her thoughts 
before she knew she had any; and well indeed 
might Mabel Blossom tremble. You see, Maudie 
and Mabel and I run the class, but our influences 
are different. I am the girl who thinks of in- 
tellectual things, and does them. Maudie is 
the girl who thinks of spiritual things and does 
them. Mabel Blossom, alas! alack! is the one 
who sometimes thinks of wicked things, and 
does them, and gets the rest of us into trouble. 
Yet we love her. I wonder why? I will analyze 
her sinful heart, and perhaps we will learn. 

Mabel doesn’t like this. I let her read all 
I write just as fast as I write it, so she can fix 
77 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


her mind on higher things; but she ’most always 
feels disapproving and cross over what I say about 
her, so Fm afraid it doesn’t really develop her 
spiritual nature much. Still, of course, I have 
to keep right on holding the mirror up to her, as 
Shakespeare says. To make everything clear, 
I will now describe the difference between Mabel 
and Maudie, as they look to the piercing gaze 
of an eye that sees into the deepest recesses of 
human beings. I mean my eye. The gentle 
reader ought to know that without being told, 
but I read it to Mabel, and she didn’t. 

When I am with Maudie we talk about life, 
and ideals, and the community spirit of help- 
fulness, and the hundred best books and what 
they do to you, and the growth of the soul. 
I can actually feel my soul grow while Maudie 
talks; sometimes it stretches and stretches till 
I think she must be blowing it up, the way a 
boy blows a toy balloon. The minute Maudie 
comes into my room evenings I can feel my soul 
begin to spread; and sometimes, though I never 
hinted it to Maudie, it makes me feel tired and 
nervous. Maudie is interested in her soul all 
the time, and I am interested in my soul some 
of the time. I suppose that’s the difference. 
Mabel Blossom doesn’t seem to be much in- 
terested in her soul any of the time. 

78 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 


When Mabel comes to see me we always 
laugh a lot, and we talk about spreads and the 
convent clubs and my stories and Mabel’s 
patients — the ones she is going to have when she’s 
a doctor — and what she’s going to do to them; and 
I feel the way you feel when you put on a wrap- 
per at night, and sit down before the open fire 
with your feet on the fender — ^warm and comfy 
and rested — and my moral nature slumbers. If 
Maudie Joyce said, ‘‘Let’s cut lessons to-morrow, 
and sneak into town and have tea and cakes and 
jam at Roberti’s,” I’d be so surprised I’d fall off 
my chair at first. Then I would get up and show 
Maudie how dreadful it was to break the rules and 
what it would do to the soul, and we wouldn’t go. 

But if Mabel Blossom said it, somehow it 
would seem different — as if one needed exercise, 
you know, and nourishment, and the mind must 
not be overtaxed. Before I knew what I was 
doing Fd be at Roberti’s drinking tea and eating 
six kinds of cake with jam spread on them, and 
laughing at the funny things Mabel said. I’d 
hardly even remember that it was wicked until 
one of the upper-class girls strolled in and caught 
us, and we were on our way back to St. Catha- 
rine’s on the trolley, seeing the clusters of birches 
by the roadside that looked like groups of young 
novices, and shadows that seemed like Sister 
79 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


Irmingarde’s black veil, and listening to the 
little moaning winds among the trees, like the 
voices of nuns discouraged over their pupils. 

Isn’t that a pretty way to describe the way our 
guilty consciences work as we go home through 
the woods at twilight? Mabel Blossom says I 
mustn’t point out such things; but if I don’t 
the gentle reader may skip them. 

Mabel came to me one day in October, looking 
important. She found me sitting under a willow 
on the bank of the river that flows through the 
convent grounds. I had Shakespeare in one 
hand and the Bible in the other, for I am form- 
ing my literary style on them. I was feeling 
dreadfully depressed because I couldn’t decide 
whether to keep to one of them alone, or make 
my style a mixture of both. You can imagine 
how unsettling and mournful that was, with 
a lot of dead autumn leaves on the ground, too. 
I wasn’t a bit glad to see Mabel. I would have 
enjoyed Maudie more just then, for my soul 
couldn’t have felt any worse than it did. But, 
of course, I moved over on the bench so Mabel 
could sit down, though I laid aside my books 
“with visible reluctance,” the way heroines do 
in stories. Mabel didn’t mind. She never does. 
Her soul is not sensitive like mine and she was 
just bursting with a plan. 

8o 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 


“May Iverson/’ she said, “do you want a new 
experience — the kind you’ve never had before?” 

I did. I always did, and right well did Mabel 
Blossom know it. She fixed me with her 
glittering eye, like the Ancient Mariner. 

“Will you promise solemnly to do it, and not 
to tell a living soul, except the girls who are in 
it, too, till it’s all over? Cross your heart?” she 
asked. 

“Is it wicked?” I inquired. 

“It is,” said Mabel Blossom. 

I promised. 

“It’s this,” said Mabel Blossom, with terrible 
coolness. “Kittie James, and Mabel Muriel 
Murphy, and Janet Trelawney, and Adeline 
Thurston, and I are going to the ruined church 
on Hallowe’en, at midnight. When we get 
there we’re going to ask the spirits the names of 
our future husbands!” 

I gasped. Then I picked up my Bible and 
pulled an expression of disapproval over my 
features, and looked just as much like Sister 
Edna as I could. 

“You know perfectly well, Mabel Blossom,” 
I said, coldly, “that you can’t do such a thing. 
It’s against the rules. Besides, there’s no way 
of getting out at midnight. The doors are all 
locked and the portress carries the keys.” 

8i 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


Mabel knew this, but the reader doesn’t, so 
I have to put it in here. I didn’t really say that 
about the keys to Mabel. I just said she couldn’t 
do it. She knew why. 

Mabel looked stubborn. She thought she was 
looking firm, but I have to tell what the effect 
really was. She made her lips into a little 
straight streak across her face, and dragged her 
eyebrows over her nose. I wish I could do it. 
Then she said: 

“I told you it was wicked. That’s where the 
wickedness comes in.” 

That’s usually where Mabel’s wickedness 
comes in — breaking the rules. She waited a 
minute; then she said, in cross tones: 

‘‘Well, are you coming, or aren’t you.^” 

I kept on hesitating. You can see how 
terrifying the idea was, but you can’t imagine 
all the horror of it, for you don’t know about that 
haunted ruin. It was a little country church 
about a mile from the convent, and it had been 
built ages and ages ago — as much as fifty years, 
I think. It had never been consecrated and used, 
for it was found that the ground was “un- 
hallowed”; and there were all sorts of thrilling 
stories about it. We used to take new girls 
there at twilight, the very first thing, and tell 
the stories to them, and watch their shudderings. 

82 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 


One legend was that lost souls had claimed the 
church and now held service in it. There was a 
little churchyard around it. The windows were 
gone, the south wall had fallen, and the old 
cellar had become a big, bottomless hole. There 
was a cracked bell in the little steeple, and it 
rang at night sometimes, in a high wind; then 
the country folks said the devil was ringing it 
to call his own around him. 

This was the place where Mabel Blossom ex- 
pected me to go at midnight and ask the spirits 
about my future husband. The thought made 
my blood sing in my ears and the soles of my 
feet feel prickly — but I wanted to go, dreadfully. 
While I was thinking it over, and remembering 
the awful things I had heard, Mabel Blossom 
was watching me, and smiling cool, superior 
smiles. • Finally she got up. 

‘‘Oh, come on. May,” she said. “It wouldn’t 
be any fun without you; and you can write 
about it if we don’t die.” 

This sounded like the whistle before the train 
starts. You know how it makes you feel — 
that you’ve got to get on the train right away. 
I got on. That means I yielded. Then we put 
our heads together and made our plans. I will 
not repeat them here. Suffice to say, as real 
writers put it, we arranged everything When 

83 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


we came up againt a problem Mabel Blossom’s 
mind could not solve, need I tell whose mind 
did solve it? It was mine. Mabel asked me 
to tell Maudie Joyce and get her to come with 
us. I did. She came. There are golden in- 
stants when Maudie forgets about her soul, 
and this was one of them. 

The night of Hallowe’en fell. Don’t you 
think that sounds better than to say it came? 
We went to bed at nine o’clock, as usual. We 
had to. We got in with our clothes on, and we 
were all drawing deep breaths of sleeping in- 
nocence when Sister Edna made her final rounds, 
just before the Great Silence. Then the con- 
vent lights everywhere went out, and the dark- 
ness got thicker and blacker, and the sorrows 
of my past life came and sat on my bed in rows, 
the way they do, and my conscience gnawed on 
the thought of what we were going to do like a 
mouse gnawing a hole in the floor. I could 
almost hear it. 

We had to wait till ten, and the only way I 
could tell when ten came was to listen till a 
distant clock struck. I can ’most always hear 
it strike, but this night I thought it never would. 
I was sure it would strike five or six, if it struck 
anything again; but at last the ten strokes 
sounded, slowly and solemnly, and I got up and 
84 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 


crept out of the room like a wraith. Every 
girl at St. Catharine’s has a room to herself, 
but the rooms are small and close together, on 
both sides of a long hall, and the two girls on the 
right and left of me were dreadfully inquisitive 
and always listening for sounds. Sometimes 
when I woke at night I made noises just to 
puzzle them — upset a chair or threw a shoe 
at the wall — but I didn’t to-night. I hardly 
dared to breathe, and I believe it took me 
ten minutes to open my door and get over 
the sill. I’d turn the door-knob a little and 
wait till the echoes died away, and then turn 
some more. 

The hall was like a long, black tunnel with a 
slippery bottom, but I slid along it in my stock- 
ing feet, holding my shoes in my hand. I was 
afraid I’d step on a pin, but there weren’t any — 
fancy Sister Italia letting pins lie on her polished 
floor that is the pride of her life! Then I 
thought of mice, and the thought was so terrible 
that I stuck my mind on the pin again. Please 
read that sentence twice; it’s worth it. Even 
Mabel Blossom says so. 

At last I got to our meeting-place — a window 
opening on a balcony at the far end of the east 
hall, away from sleepers. All the girls were 
there except Maudie Joyce. Maudie’s con- 

85 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


science had been gnawing, too, but not enough 
to keep her from us. She arrived about a second 
after I did. Our presence seemed to be a great 
comfort to our dear companions. Kittie James 
caught my hand and held it tight, and I dis- 
tinctly heard Mabel Blossom draw a deep, 
gurgling breath of relief. Even her dauntless 
soul did not yearn to lead that group out of the 
second-floor window, and down the side of the 
balcony, through the ivy, across the convent 
grounds, and a whole mile in the dark to a haunt- 
ed church. There are limits to dauntlessness. 

Now that we were there, though, Mabel led 
the way, in a careless manner, as if she had meant 
to all along, and we followed her. We got 
down safely, but Fm sure some of Mother 
Ernesta’s pet ivy on that wall won’t cling much 
any more. Kittie James fell when she was 
about six feet from the ground, and she started 
to shriek, but Maudie had presence of mind 
and caught her by the throat before much of the 
shriek got out. We counted noses, and when we 
knew we were together, with no loved one lost 
in the ivy, we started for the ruin. 

I will now stop and describe the scene, though 
I know the reader is in suspense. It was just 
the kind of a night for Hallowe’en — “when 
churchyards yawn and graves give up their 
86 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 


dead.” The sky was covered with moving 
clouds. A cold wind blew across the fields, and 
there was a tiny little piece of moon that looked 
like Maudie Joyce’s curved pearl pin. It kept 
peeping in and out among the clouds. When we 
especially needed light it stayed behind them; 
but when there was something grim and grisly 
ahead of us, that moon came out and made it 
look worse. A year ago I would have said that 
it was like a silver horn or a golden crescent. 
My expressions are more original now. I would 
be sorry if no one but me noticed it, though al- 
ready I realize that much of an artist’s greatest 
art is lost to the thoughtless reader. 

The girls were huddled together in a group, 
white and scared, staring at the ruined church, 
just ahead of us, and afraid to go one step 
farther. It was indeed a wild and lonely scene, 
with the light of that elfish moon touching a 
bit of the belfry, and everything else looking 
shadowy and terrible, like things in troubled 
dreams. The wind was beginning to moan 
among the tall pine trees in the churchyard, 
and, while we stood shivering and hesitating, a 
screech-owl in the belfry let out a frightful 
screech. 

Of course we knew what it was; we had heard 
lots of screech-owls before. They love the trees 
7 87 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


along our river, and half a dozen of them live 
there. But we weren’t expecting any noise 
then, so we all jumped and Kittie James screeched 
too. The other girls were sorry for Kittie. I 
was not. Though I am only sixteen, I am a 
student of life, and this thought came to me: 
If that little owl was proud of his screeching, how 
perfectly dreadful he must have felt when Kittie 
James screeched so much better. For of course 
screeching was, in Kittie’s life, ‘^a thing apart,” 
as Shakespeare says, but it was his ‘‘whole 
existence.” I quote more from Shakespeare 
than I do from the Bible, because Shakespeare 
is so coldly intellectual. 

While the thought about the screech was in 
my mind, and I was wishing I had a pencil and 
some paper to write it down so I wouldn’t for- 
get it, and almost forgetting entirely about the 
haunted ruin, Mabel Blossom spoke up, in 
distinct but trembling words. 

“I will go first,” she said. “I will ask the 
first question. The rest of you needn’t come 
with me, if you are afraid.” 

She started off toward the ruin with a rush, 
as if she had picked herself up and thrown her- 
self at it. I knew why. It was because she was 
scared to death and didn’t dare to go slowly. 
The other girls thought it was because she was 
88 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 


so brave. Don't you see how much better I 
understand things than they do? Maudie and 
I went after her with languid steps; I wasn't 
a bit anxious to get nearer to the ruin. Of course 
the other girls followed us. I guess they thought 
it was better to go with us into the jaws of death, 
and perhaps slide down, than to wait behind and 
die alone. The minute Mabel got to the wall 
she leaned across it and hung down over the awful 
blackness below. I was right behind her, and 
I distinctly saw her shut her eyes. The owl 
hadn't screeched again after Kittie had dis- 
couraged him, and now there wasn't a sound 
except Kittie's hard breaths. The moon had 
gone behind a cloud again. We heard wings 
flutter — the owl, perhaps, or bats in the ruin — 
and the scampering of little feet below us, like 
the feet of mice. 

Suddenly^ Mabel spoke up, loud and clear, in 
the invocation Adeline Thurston had written 
for her: 

‘‘Oh, ruin, ruin, tell me true 
What I, Mabel Blossom, ask of you, — 

The name of my future husband.” 

We stood close behind her and held our breaths, 
and waited for what would happen. The wings 
and feet stopped. I never listened to so much 
89 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


stillness, and then to so many echoes. It 
seemed as if the whole wide world must have 
heard Mabel’s words going down into that 
abyss like thunderclaps, and coming up again 
in waves of sound that rolled around us. 

Kittie James says it was three hours before 
anything else happened, but really in about 
one minute a low, wailing voice came to us 
from below. This is what it said: 

‘‘J-o-h-n G-o-r-d-o-n.” 

The gentle reader won’t believe this, but it 
happened. You have heard of heroines being 
frozen to the spot when something terrible oc- 
curred. That’s the way I was — frozen. I could 
not stir an inch, and I felt my knotted and com- 
bined locks parting, exactly the way Shakespeare 
says they do. 

I guess the other girls felt the way I did; there 
wasn’t a sound among them. Even Kittie 
stopped breathing; not a leaf or a petticoat 
rustled. I tried to look around, but my eyes 
wouldn’t move. My eyeballs felt like frozen 
gum-drops. Then we heard a queer, heavy 
sound, and there in front of us was Mabel 
Blossom, stretched out on the ground, flat on 
her face. She lay perfectly still; we knew she 
was dead. 

That moved the girls! They started off* in 
90 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 


every direction, in leaping bounds, as if the 
ground was rising under them and they had to 
get up first; and as they ran they uttered choked, 
horrible noises. They were trying to scream 
and they couldn’t. It was like a thousand 
nightmares. Maudie and I bent over Mabel, 
and each caught her by one foot. Then we ran, 
too, taking Mabel with us. It wasn’t easy, for 
Mabel is plump and the fields were rough; but 
we were stronger than we knew. Even if she 
was dead, we couldn’t leave Mabel to the lost 
souls in that ruin, so we ran and dragged, and 
dragged and ran. Once Mabel’s hair caught 
on the stump of a tree, and we had to stop, and 
another time her blouse caught on something 
and tore straight down the front before we could 
get her away. All the time I thought of how the 
evil spirits might pursue us for robbing them of 
their prey, and of the shapes they might take. 
It is strange, indeed, how many diflFerent thoughts 
the mind can think at such a time. 

While we were pulling the blouse I heard 
panting breaths around us. At first I was afraid 
to look up. Who wouldn’t he? I pause to 
inquire. But finally I did, and I saw that it 
was only the rest of the girls running behind 
us and beside us. We were all together again. 
Everybody was running except the stark burden 

91 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


we dragged after us, but that was getting over 
the ground nice and fast, too. By and by it 
began to kick so we could hardly hold the feet. 
We stopped again, and dropped them, and saw 
what had happened. We had been dragging 
Mabel’s face through the wet grass because we 
picked her up by the wrong end, and were in such 
a hurry. But it had revived her, so you see it 
was really the best thing we could have done, 
though we hadn’t thought of that at the time. 
We had just trusted to instinct, which it is truly 
said rarely fails the young. 

Pretty soon Mabel began to moan, and at 
last she sat up and wiped her face and asked what 
had happened, and where she was. She wasn’t 
very far from the ruin. We hadn’t dragged her 
a long distance, after all, though it had seemed 
miles. The haunted church lay close behind us, 
spectral and terrible. We could see it by looking 
back. 

After a few minutes Mabel got on her feet, 
but she couldn’t walk, and she begged us not 
to leave her there to die alone. We had to wait 
till she was stronger, and while we were waiting 
I began to get calmer, and finally I had an idea. 
I hastened to share it with my dear companions. 

‘T don’t believe we heard any voice at all,” 
I said. ‘‘I believe we imagined it because we 
92 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 


were frightened, or perhaps we hypnotized our- 
selves. Tm going back to try again.’* 

It was not a noble courage that moved me, 
but that which is stronger than life — my art. 
All of a sudden it seemed impossible for me to 
go on without knowing what was down in the 
awful bowels of that ruin. Besides, how could 
I write about it if I didn’t know? None of the 
girls offered to come back with me, but I didn’t 
care. Almost before they could offer (not 
quite before, but almost) I was running back 
alone. In a very few minutes I reached the 
ruin, and, without waiting a second, I called 
down into it over the old wall, the way Mabel 
had done. The wind was getting worse. It 
sounded like a chorus of warning voices in the 
trees, but I didn’t stop to listen. I said my 
verses in a loud, determined voice: 

“Ruin, ruin, tell me true. 

I, May Iverson, ask of you 
The name of my future husband.” 

At first there wasn’t a sound in reply. But 
just as I began to feel my spine getting a little 
warmer that terrible voice rose from the abyss 
again, and this time it wailed like a banshee: 

F-r-e-d-e-r-i-c-k M-a-n-s-o-n.” 

Don’t ask me what happened next. It would 
93 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


take a real writer, like Edgar Allan Poe, to tell 
you. Besides, I don’t remember. I only know 
that I got back to the girls somehow, and that 
we stumbled across the cold, wet fields for cen- 
turies and centuries and centuries. At last I 
thought I had always been running away from 
a ghost, through a dark night, and that I must 
keep on doing it till the world came to an end. 

I was going to shriek with the awfulness of it 
(yes, I really was) when I looked up and saw 
the blessed old convent buildings snuggled to- 
gether in front of us, with our beautiful cross on 
the chapel spire pointing peacefully to the stars 
that were beginning to come out. I knew noth- 
ing could happen to us then, so I stopped to 
breathe, and the others did, too, and pretty soon 
my mind got quieter. It went to work again 
right away, thinking about Frederick Manson. 
He is a boy I simply detest, and the girls know it. 
I see him when I am home on vacations, but I 
never answer the letters he writes me. He has 
no soul for art, and he is not intellectual. He 
makes me feel the way you do when you peel 
a peach or draw your finger-nail across a crack 
in the window-pane. The thought of marrying 
him was so terribly bitter that I sat right down 
on the wet grass and began to cry. I never felt 
so nervous in my life. 


94 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 


“I won’t marry Frederick Manson!” I cried. 
“I won’t! I won’t! I’d rather die, right here, 
without waiting!” 

Maudie Joyce is a Southern girl, from Virginia. 
Once in a very, very long time, when she gets 
terribly excited, she talks with a kind of queer 
Southern drawl and accent, the way her old 
black mammy nurse used to talk to her when 
she was a tiny girl. She sat down on the grass 
beside me, and put her arms tight around me, 
and rocked me back and forth. 

‘‘Do’n you be frightened, honey,” she said, 
over and over. “I ain’t gwine let any boy 
mah’y you if you all do’n like him. Do’n you 
cry. Do’n you cry.” 

I knew she would save me, so I didn’t cry any 
more. The other girls stood and looked on 
without sympathy. They had cold, blue noses 
and wet feet. Mabel Blossom told me later, 
with her own lips, that they all thought Maudie 
and I ought to have waited till we got indoors to 
talk about my marriage. But Maudie comforted 
me so much that pretty soon I felt better and got 
up. We all crept to the convent balcony, and 
climbed through what was left of the ivy, and 
got in the hall and reached our rooms — and not a 
soul heard us! It was too good to be true. 
I don’t suppose the Sisters would ever have 
95 


1 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 

known anything about it if Kittie James hadn’t 
had hysterics in her room just as soon as Maudie 
left her there alone. Sister Edna heard the hys- 
terics — every one in that wing heard them, I 
think — so the whole story came out. We were 
all visited in our rooms, and given baths and 
rubbings and hot drinks, and looked at with sad, 
reproachful eyes. But the Sisters didn’t say 
much that night; it was too late. 

If the reader will let me, I will draw a veil 
over the tragic happenings that followed, the next 
day. I could describe them, but I don’t like 
to write about sad things at this time; my pen 
turns more to gaiety. Maudie and I had the 
worst time of all, I think, for Sister Irmingarde 
told us she had depended on us to use our in- 
fluence for good at St. Catharine’s, and that we 
had both failed her, and she feared she could never 
depend on us again. You can imagine how such 
words made us feel. We cried till we were sick. 
Maudie had to go to the infirmary. I didn’t; 
I cried just as much, but I have a stronger con- 
stitution. Besides, I know that suffering is 
good for my art, and that always comforts me, 
right away. Sometimes it comforts me so much 
that I can’t keep on suffering; then my emotions 
are strange and puzzling. Even I can hardly 
describe them. Mabel Blossom was sent to 
96 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 


Mother Ernesta, and we didn’t see her for hours. 
When she finally came into the study-hall, 
late in the afternoon, her eyes were red, too, 
and she buried herself in her books, as real 
authors say, and didn’t speak to anybody. 

But what worried us most of all was the 
memory of that dreadful voice. ^ When a ghost 
has talked to you, and told you real things about 
your most intimate interests, you go around 
afterward with sinking feelings in your stomach, 
and you can’t sleep nights. All the girls who 
went to the ruin got nervous, and went to the 
infirmary, like Maudie. Finally Mabel and I 
were the only girls not on the sick-list. Kittie 
James was so nervous she had to have one of the 
infirmarians sleep in the same room with her. 
Kittie said it was dreadful to wake at night and 
be thinking of beautiful, peaceful things, like 
a box from home, and then suddenly turn and 
look into the fleshless sockets of a ghost who was 
grinding the words ‘‘Frederick Manson” be- 
tween his bony jaws. Of course that gave me 
hysterics, right olF. 

The Sisters forbade us to talk about the ruin 
or the ghost or to think about them, so we 
stopped talking; but our thoughts worked harder 
than ever, as they always do when you are not 
allowed to talk about things. At last the nuns 
97 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


put their heads together, and sent for every 
girl, and talked to her alone. When that hap- 
pens each heart gives up its maiden secrets. 

Three days after Hallowe’en, the girls in the 
infirmary were told to get up and dress for sup- 
per. The nuns said something interesting was 
going to happen in the refectory, and no one 
should miss it. The girls rose, pale and wan, 
and when the supper-bell rang we all went to 
the refectory together with a slow gait, like a 
band of Minims stepping heavenward. It is not 
amusing in the refectory. We are not allowed 
to talk while we are eating. Usually Sister 
Italia reads an improving book, and of course 
that’s enough to discourage any appetite, unless 
there’s sardines. We were sure the interesting 
thing couldn’t be food, because we know exactly 
what the food is going to be. Monday night, 
cold lamb and bread and butter and prunes and 
milk; Tuesday, cold beef and biscuits and canned 
peaches and milk; Wednesday — but I will spare 
the gentle reader. We have ‘‘simple, nourish- 
ing meals,” as our prospectus says, and plenty of 
them; but I notice that whenever I talk about 
our food at the convent my father groans. He 
is a general in the army, too, and you know what 
privations they have. Of course we get lots of 
boxes from home, and they contain the cakes 
98 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 


and pickles and jam that growing girls re- 
quire. 

We sat down without zest, and got ready to 
put food into ourselves absent-mindedly, the way 
you put coals on the fire, and I was just wonder- 
ing whether we were having little peaches or big 
apricots when I noticed that all the girls were 
staring toward the foot of the long room. I 
stared, too. Well indeed I might. 

A big canvas was stretched the whole width 
of the refectory, against the south wall. On 
that canvas, in black crayon sketches, was the 
entire story of our Hallowe’en visit to the haunted 
church. We hadn’t done a single thing that 
wasn’t there. The first picture showed us climb- 
ing down the ivy. In the second we were run- 
ning across the fields. In the third we were 
at the ruins, and Mabel was calling down to 
the ghost. The fourth showed Mabel fainting, 
and in the fifth we were dragging her across the 
fields on her face and holding her feet, which 
looked dreadfully big. They are, too. Then 
a picture showed me calling to the ghost, with 
Shakespeare under my arm. I don’t think that 
was very good, for I didn’t have Shakespeare 
under my arm. Another picture showed Maudie 
and me sitting on the ground, and Maudie com- 
forting me, and there was a balloon thing com- 
99 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


ing out of Maudie’s mouth, saying, ‘‘Do’n you 
cry, honey, I ain’t gwine let you mah’y him.” 

After that came our return up the ivy, with 
the ivy all hanging in shreds and patches, like 
shoe-strings. In the corner of every picture 
was a perfectly horrified little moon, looking 
down on us with eyes almost as big as his face, 
and his expression different every time. He was 
weeping over me and Maudie, in our picture. 
But the last two sketches were the ones that 
drew and held our unbelieving eyes. In the 
first Mabel Blossom was giving a dollar to 
Jonas, our old head gardener! In the other — 
the last one of all — Jonas was down in the church 
cellar, reading a list of names by the light of a 
tallow dip, and shouting ‘‘Frederick Manson” 
up at me! The little moon had thrown his head 
back and was shouting, too, and the little stars 
were crowding around to listen 

Then, indeed, we knew all. The ghost was 
old Jonas, and Mabel Blossom had hired him to 
be a ghost. Was this perfidy? I do not pause 
for a reply. I know too well what it would be. 
But we had our revenge; for, after all, the ghost 
had frightened Mabel even more than he did us. 
Jonas changed his voice so dreadfully that Mabel 
thought the ghost had destroyed him and taken 
his place, as a punishment for her. She told 

lOO 


WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN 


us so afterward, as soon as we would let her tell 
us anything. At first we wouldn’t. 

After we had looked at the pictures, and no- 
body had said anything because nobody was 
allowed to, Mabel got up from her place at the 
table and made a speech. She said she wanted 
to ask our pardon. She had played a very silly 
joke, and she was sorry. She hoped we would 
forgive her. She would try to do better. Her 
face was very red. Then she sat down, and 
Sister Italia said grace, and we all began to eat, 
casting ever and anon disapproving looks at Mabel 
Blossom. But we felt ever so much more cheerful. 

It was a long, long time before we heard who 
made the drawings. That secret was kept locked 
in the nuns’ breasts. When we did hear, months 
afterward, we could hardly believe it. I will 
let the gentle reader get the same shock. 

It was Sister Irmingarde! Mabel had con- 
fessed to her, and Sister Irmingarde thought it 
would “remove the ghost impression most ef- 
fectually” to do it in a funny way. She had 
studied art in Paris before she became a nun. 
So she made the drawings. Wasn’t she clever.? 
When I write my essay on Shakespeare I’m 
going to bring her in, too. For, like Shakespeare, 
Sister Mary Irmingarde sees into the deepest 
recesses of the human heart. 


lOI 


V 


I INTRODUCE BEAUTY CULTURE 

HE idea came to me in the class- 
room one day while Kittie James 
was reciting, and, like most of my 
ideas, it came very suddenly. One 
moment my mind was a perfect 
blank. The next it was working so 
hard I thought Janet Trelawney, who sat be- 
hind me, would hear it buzz. 

My mind usually is a blank when Kittie 
James is reciting. Poor Kittie is not a bright 
student, alas! and of course I always know a great 
deal more about the lesson than she can pos- 
sibly tell Sister Irmingarde. So I let my in- 
tellect rest. That day Kittie was talking about 
the ancient Greeks and their manners and cus- 
toms. She seemed to think they were some 
kind of weird prehistoric animals, like the meg- 
atheriums and pterodactyls we read about in 
our geology. Even that impression was an 
intellectual improvement for Kittie though, for 
102 



\ 


BEAUTY CULTURE 

only last week she told me with her own lips 
that she didn’t believe there ever had been any 
ancient Greeks, anyway. She said she was 
perfectly sure the men who wrote school-books 
put in the ancient Greeks to fill up — ^when their 
imaginations got tired after inventing so much 
about the earth being a round ball, and the stars 
being billions of miles away, and things like that. 
She said she knew full well those things were not 
true either, though she rarely said so because 
most people believe everything they read and 
there is no sense in arguing with them. She said 
the only person she ever opened her heart to 
about her lessons was George Morgan. 

George is her brother-in-law because he married 
her sister Josephine. Kittie and I adore him 
and he is simply heavenly about sending us 
boxes. Kittie said George laughed at first 
when she told him she didn’t believe the things 
in her school-books; but when she asked him if 
he thought the long flash of a falling star was 
really the light from a burning world that had 
been destroyed millions of years ago he looked 
serious. Kittie said she couldn’t light a match 
in her room at night without having Sister 
Irmingarde see it that very instant from her 
room ’way off* in another wing of the convent. 
So Kittie added that no one could convince 
8 103 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


her the light of that burning world was only 
reaching us now, because it had taken millions 
of years to make the weary journey. Kittie 
told me George admitted that astronomers had 
yet several things to learn, and that he didn’t 
take much stock in them, either; and he added 
that personally he had few prejudices and would 
as soon listen to Kittie’s theories as theirs. 

This pleased Kittie very much, so she told 
him all her theories right off. They had a de- 
lightful and intellectual conversation, but it 
doesn’t belong in this place, so I will not repeat 
it here. None of what I have said really belongs, 
but it doesn’t have to. It is only put in for at- 
mosphere, anyway, and to get the gentle reader 
even more interested in Kittie. There is one thing 
I must add, though, while I think of it. George 
told Kittie that very night that my fiction and 
her science were making life one glad, sweet 
song for him. Those were indeed his words, 
and they bring me right back to my fiction now, 
like the weary bird to its nest. But for fear the 
reader’s mind may be a little confused by pass- 
ing so swiftly from Kittie to the ancient Greeks 
and burning worlds and then back to Kittie 
I will repeat my opening remarks: 

My mind was a perfect blank and Kittie was 
reciting about the ancient Greeks. 

104 


BEAUTY CULTURE 


Suddenly a word caught my attention. It was 
Beauty, Kittie said the Greeks loved beauty 
so much that they were willing to give their 
whole lives to the pursuit of it. That is exactly 
the way I feel a great deal of the time, so I 
began to think about the Greeks and beauty and 
how important beauty is and how it refreshes 
the eye and the soul, too. No matter how tired 
I am, for instance, I always feel rested when I 
look at Sister Irmingarde. There is something 
in her eyes and in her face — but I will not begin 
to tell about that now, for if I did I should never 
get back to Kittie and the ancient Greeks. 
However, I looked at Sister Irmingarde for a 
few minutes and felt rested and refreshed, as 
usual. Then I looked at my dear companions, 
putting the ancient Greeks up behind them as a 
kind of a background — like an imaginary frieze, 
you know — and the shock was so great I almost 
groaned aloud. It was as if I had been living 
blind among horrors and had suddenly been 
given sight. 

I began with Kittie. Kittie has never been 
beautiful, though she has a lovely nature and a 
sweet expression. Several years ago, before she 
got so fat, she used to look really soulful at times. 
But no fat person can possibly look soulful, as 
I have oft pointed out to Kittie. As I looked at 
105 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


her now I saw clearly that she had almost 
obscured her soul, as it were, by chocolate cake 
and pickles and marmalade and fudge, for next 
to her dear mother Kittie loves rich food. Else- 
where, as real writers say, I have told how I 
“reduced’’ Kittie and took off twenty pounds 
of her flesh in three weeks. But by this 
time Kittie, alas ! had gained them back 
again. 

Much as I loved Kittie, I averted my eyes 
from her and looked at Maudie Joyce. Maudie 
is usually rather nice to look at. But now she 
was studying hard, with her left hand thrust 
through her hair, and her hair all rumpled, and 
her knees crossed (in spite of all the nuns have 
said about that), and her teeth chewing her 
lower lip the way they do when she is nervous. 
So I had to stop looking at her, for beauty was 
not in her, as the poet says. 

Then, like the Greeks of old, I went on a quest 
for beauty. Of course I sat in my seat just the 
same. It was only my eyes that moved — but 
they roamed from face to face in that great class- 
room and with every roam my heart grew 
heavier. I have already told my gentle readers 
how keen my insight is. They will not be sur- 
prised to learn, therefore, that as I looked from 
face to face I knew just why each one was not 
io6 


BEAUTY CULTURE 


beautiful; and, what was much more important, 
I knew what to do to improve it. 

Kittie James was fat, as I have said, and her 
complexion was pasty because she ate too much. 
Adeline Thurston was round-shouldered from 
writing poetry. Mabel Blossom had chewed 
the inside of her face and pulled at her lips and 
ears till it was hard to imagine how they would 
look if she ever let them alone. Maudie did the 
same thing, though she had a queenly carriage. 
Mabel Muriel Murphy, though neat and tidy, 
looked as if she hadn’t any emotions. She was 
just placid and peaceful, like a cow contented 
with her cud. (That is more alliteration. 
Please read it aloud and see how nice it sounds.) 
Janet Trelawney was too thin. She had no 
graceful curves. And so it went. Every girl 
I looked at had something the matter with her. 
Even my own appearance had faults, though 
I forgot about these till Maudie Joyce and Mabel 
Blossom and the other girls pointed them out 
to me in the evening. But of this more anon, 
as real writers say. 

I hope the gentle reader knows me well enough 
by this time to realize that, after I had grasped 
all this, I did not remain idle. Nay, I called a 
meeting of the girls in our special set that very 
night. I asked them to come to my room so 
107 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


we could talk as long as we pleased without 
being interrupted. 

They were not very enthusiastic when they 
came. You see, I had to make them understand 
right olF how vital the matter was, and to do 
that I had to tell them immediately what was 
the matter with their looks. I did it. I said 
it was necessary, of course, to be perfectly frank, 
no matter how much frankness hurt the victim. 
I said I was like a surgeon, causing pain for the 
patient’s good. Then I told the girls the worst 
things about themselves, and said I’d tell them 
more when we met and how to remedy these sad 
defects. 

They were not a bit grateful. When they 
came in the evening, they all talked at once and 
wasted a great deal of time telling me what was 
the matter with my looks, instead of getting 
right to work on themselves, the way I wanted 
them to do. But I finally comforted them by 
saying that I knew I looked worse than any one 
else. I didn’t think I did, really, away down in 
what Mr. James calls my ‘‘abysmal self”; but 
they did; and they all gave so many reasons for 
thinking it that I simply couldn’t fix my mind 
on the ancient Greeks for almost an hour. 

At last they let me talk a while, and I told 
them what a wonderful power beauty was, and 
io8 


BEAUTY CULTURE 


that there wasn’t any of it at St. Catharine’s so 
far, but how we might get some if we tried. 
Mabel Blossom spoke right up and said she 
thought so, too, and that she had an idea. 
Usually I am a little afraid of Mabel’s ideas. 
They are not practical. But she seemed very 
much in earnest, so I invited her to express it. 

Mabel got up very solemnly and said every- 
thing I had said was true, and that there was 
much to be done, and we must all put our 
shoulders to the wheel. But she said if every 
girl worked by herself nothing would be ac- 
complished. Each girl would put cold cream 
on her face for a few nights and then forget 
about it. But, Mabel said, if the whole school 
worked on one girl the results ought to be 
glorious. Everybody cheered that and they 
all talked at once, but Mabel Blossom lifted her 
lily hand and checked them, for she had more 
to say. As I looked at her I had a strange 
sinking sensation — for full well I knew now 
what this would be. I was right, too, as I most 
always am. It is wonderful how I can tell what 
the girls are going to do even before they do it. 
This is partly, of course, because I know the 
girls so well; but most of my strange insight is 
due to the artist’s knowledge of the poor, weak. 
Human Heart. 


109 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 

While I was thinking these thoughts Mabel 
went right on talking. She said that as I was 
the girl who thought of the plan I ought to be 
the subject of the experiment. She said that 
was only fair to me — to let me be the first girl 
to get the good of my own idea. Besides, she 
said, I had confessed that I needed it most. 
I tried to speak and tell her I didn’t want to 
be so selfish; but she raised her voice and made 
a motion that I should be the girl, and Maudie 
Joyce seconded it, and in another minute it was 
carried unanimously. Perhaps the gentle reader 
thinks he can imagine my emotions, but he 
can’t, so I will describe them myself. 

It is a strange and unsettling feeling to have a 
beautiful idea and tell it to one’s dear com- 
panions, and then have them take it and change 
it so one hardly knows it oneself. I didn’t 
exactly want to go on with the plan, and yet 
I couldn’t stand the thought of dropping it and 
having the girls laugh at me. I had wanted to 
improve the looks of the whole school. Now 
the whole school wanted to improve my looks. 
I had wanted them to put their shoulders to 
the wheel. Now they wanted me to be the 
wheel! Still, as Mabel Blossom pointed out, 
the principle was the same, and it was the prin- 
ciple that was important. Mabel said that 
no 


BEAUTY CULTURE 


after the school had made me perfect they would 
have a model to go by and could make them- 
selves perfect, too, avoiding the mistakes they 
would naturally make at first with me. She 
said sometimes whole features were changed by 
beauty-work, and of course errors were apt to 
creep in; but she was sure the girls would do the 
best they could. She said she thought the way 
to begin was for me to stand out in the center 
of the room and let the girls study me, and dis- 
cuss my physical faults and how to correct them. 
She put that motion and Janet Trelawney 
seconded it, and it was carried unanimously 
like the first — and all the girls seemed perfectly 
delighted. 

Was that fair? I would pause for a reply, 
but it is not worth while. Full well do I know 
what the reply could be. 

Finally they let me speak. I said I thought 
it would be better to rest now, after doing so 
much, and begin our new work the next night. 
But Mabel said no, and the other girls agreed 
with her. She said the time to begin was at 
once, while they were full of eagerness and en- 
thusiasm, and would I please hurry and get into 
the middle of the room. She dragged a foot- 
stool forward and made me stand on it, and all 
the girls stood around and studied me and looked 

III 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


more and more depressed; and ever and anon 
they shook their heads and sighed. Mabel 
reminded them of what I had suggested about 
being perfectly frank and using the surgeon’s 
knife; and she told the girls not to mind my 
feelings, because everything they said, even if it 
seemed harsh and cruel, would be for my good. 

For a while no one spoke. They all seemed 
too discouraged. But finally Adeline Thurs- 
ton said that of course my feet were too big, 
but she didn’t see that anything could be done 
about them. Mabel said, very crossly, that she 
didn’t see what could be done, either, and that 
there was no sense in starting with the simply 
impossible things. She said it would be better 
to begin by telling me that the green dress I 
was wearing made my skin the color of a lemon, 
and she thought I ought to know it. 

Maudie Joyce said it was the way I wore my 
hair that had always worried her more than 
anything else about me. She didn’t think it 
went with the shape of my head. But when 
all the girls agreed to that, too, and Mabel 
pressed her to suggest something better, Maudie 
said she couldn’t think of anything that would 
make my head a good shape and that she guessed 
the hair was like the feet — too hard to take up 
at first. Then there was a long silence and they 

II2 



I MADE UP MY MIND NEVER TO HAVE ANOTHER IDEA IF 

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BEAUTY CULTURE 

all looked more discouraged than ever. I made 
up my mind that very minute never to have 
another idea if I could possibly help it. 

Finally Kittie James said, timidly, that there 
was a curve in my chin that might make it look 
double when I was older, so all the girls made 
suggestions about this and agreed that I must 
give my chin fifty up-strokes with the backs 
of my hands every night and every morning. 
They passed that unanimously, too; and Mabel 
Muriel Murphy said my mouth was beginning 
to droop at the corners, and she thought fifty 
upward strokes night and morning might remedy 
that in a few years. She said she had seen her 
mother do it. 

The girls were getting enthusiastic again. 
Maudie said one of my teeth was crooked, but 
she knew a dentist in Chicago who would 
straighten it while there was yet time if I would 
wear a wedge for three months. Mabel Muriel 
asked if anything could be done about my ears, 
and they decided nothing could without risking 
my hearing, but they advised me to wear my 
hair over them. Adeline Thurston said she had 
always thought it was a pity my hands were so 
large, but she supposed it was because I played 
the piano so much; and Kittie James asked if 
it wouldn’t help my eyebrows to have about half 

113 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


the hair taken out of them. Mabel Blossom 
said my eyes were all right, and it was lucky 
they were, with so much wrong in other places. 
But she added that they had a near-sighted look 
and I might form the habit of squinting if I 
wasn’t careful. She said she knew one girl 
with eyes like mine who squinted so much no 
one could bear to look at her. 

Kittie James said she wouldn’t listen to any- 
thing about my eyes because she simply loved 
them. I looked gratefully ^t Kittie, but be- 
fore the look really got over to her Kittie said 
she was afraid I would have to work hard before 
my carriage would be erect and graceful; and 
Maudie said specialists were doing wonders for 
noses now; and Janet Trelawney, who hadn’t 
spoken before, but who looked more discouraged 
over me than ’most any one else, said that she 
thought it would help my general effect a lot 
if I didn’t talk so fast. Kittie James spoke up 
again and said I was neat, anyway, and they all 
agreed that I was and seemed glad to be able 
to say something pleasant at last. Then they 
sat and looked at me a while and sighed and 
seemed more depressed than ever. 

At last Adeline Thurston began to talk about 
my literary faults, but you’d better believe I 
stopped that and pointed out with icy dignity that 
114 


BEAUTY CULTURE 


my looks and not my art were what they were 
there to criticize. Mabel Blossom agreed with 
me; and she reminded the girls that if they began 
to talk about my literary faults, too, they’d 
never get through. 

That started them ofF again, and they got 
pencils and paper and took notes which I need 
not repeat here and made out a list of daily 
rules for me to follow. There were hundreds of 
rules when they got through, and the list looked 
miles long. I tore it up as soon as I was alone, 
but I remember some of the things I was to do. 
Here they are: 

Walk five miles a day with a book on your head. 

Push the corners of your mouth up every night and 
fasten them up with court-plaster. 

Pull half your eyebrows out with pincers. 

Sleep with a rubber band under your chin. Rub 
your chin every morning with a lump of ice as large 
as a hen’s egg. Keep rubbing till the ice is melted. 

Wear a Greek fillet around your hair and keep 
your head erect with a velvet strap from the fillet to 
the back of your collar. 

Consult your companions before you buy a new 
dress, to be sure they can stand it. 

There seemed millions of other things, but I 
was too hurt to pay much attention to them. 
I saw, however, that if I did even a quarter of 

115 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


them every day I wouldn't have time to do any- 
thing else. 

After they finished writing the things for me 
to do they were pretty tired and quiet for a while. 
I had a chance to say a few words myself and 
I said them. I said I was very much interested 
in all they had told me, but that it seemed a 
dreadful thing for me to be getting all the atten- 
tion when others needed so much. I urged them 
again to go into the thing together. I pointed 
out how much more fun it would be to take the 
exercises at the same time, and do all the queer 
things together and then talk them over, than 
for one person to do it alone. Besides, I remind- 
ed them it would be very unpleasant for me, 
after I was perfect, to have to look at them the 
way they were now. Before I had finished talk- 
ing half the girls came over to my side, and the 
end of it was that they all began to tell one an- 
other of serious faults they had observed in one 
another. 

Then things got exciting. They forgot all 
about me, and I was glad they did for a few 
minutes. I sat back and looked on. I didn’t 
say much more about how the girls looked. I 
had already told them most of the worst things; 
but different girls kept calling to me every 
minute to ask if something some one else said 

ii6 


BEAUTY CULTURE 


was really true — and of course I usually had to 
agree, because it ’most always was true. 

At last, out of all the confusion, we evolved 
a plan of work. We decided to keep the beauty 
culture right in our own class and to help each 
other all we could for one week. A list of rec- 
ommendations was to be given to every single 
girl to suit her case, and she was to work as hard 
as she possibly could to correct the imperfection 
her dear companions couldn’t stand. We saw 
from my list how impossible it would be to do 
everything, so each girl was to work on one or 
two vital things. 

For example, Kittie James had to walk five 
miles a day with a rubber undervest on and not 
eat a thing except at the convent-table. Mabel 
Blossom had to do all her studying with her 
hands tied so she couldn’t pull her features about. 
Adeline Thurston said she thought it would be 
simply fascinating at the end of the week to 
see how Mabel’s features really looked. Adeline 
had to have a board between her shoulders all 
her free hours and practise walking two hours a 
day. Jennie Hartwell, whose hips were simply 
enormous, had to roll on her mattress one hun- 
dred times every morning and one hundred 
times every night. Mabel Muriel Murphy 
had to drink four quarts of hot water every day 
117 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


to improve her complexion, and read Byron 
and Keats and Tennyson in the hope that they 
would stir up her emotions and give her an in- 
telligent expression. That was my idea. Mabel 
Muriel didn’t like it very much, but she had to 
do it just the same. I started her on Keats. 

“St. Agnes Eve — ah, bitter chill it was. 

The owl with all his feathers was a’ cold.” 

I thought that poem would make Mabel Muriel 
cry if anything could, but it didn’t. The only 
things that interested her were the ‘‘candied 
apple, quince, and plum” the heroine and hero 
ate. She read the description of the supper to 
Kittie James: 

“With jellies soother than the creamy curd. 

And lucent syrups, tinct with cinnamon. 

Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d 
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one. 

From Silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon.” 

Those two girls were simply fascinated by that 
menu. They gave a convent spread two weeks 
later as near like it as they could. Mabel 
Muriel’s rich father sent the things from Chicago. 
Most of us were sick after the supper — but 
this is not the place to describe the banquet nor 
our sufferings, terrible though they were. It 

ii8 


BEAUTY CULTURE 


is very strange, but every time I write a chapter 
in my book I think of half a dozen things before 
I get through that would have been better to 
write about. This seems incredible, but it Is 
indeed true. 

Of course everything we did in our beauty 
treatment had to be done very quietly so as not 
to attract the attention of the nuns and worry 
them by making them imagine something was 
going on they didn’t know about. For it is a 
sad fact that, no matter how many beautiful 
ideas we girls have at St. Catharine’s, and how 
hard it is to carry them out, we have to keep up 
our regular school routine just the same. We 
try all our experiments in recreation-hours, and 
I suppose we wouldn’t have much chance even 
then except that we have the beautiful system 
of self-government, which makes us responsible 
only to God and our consciences for what we do. 
As our consciences are always clear and our 
objects high, and we are really stepping heaven- 
ward the whole time, nobody fusses much unless 
we make serious mistakes. We don’t very 
often; but several serious things happened during 
the beauty culture. The worst was that Jennie 
Hartwell fell out of bed while she was rolling 
a hundred times on her mattress to reduce her 
hips and broke her wrist. She didn’t tell why 
9 119 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


it happened, however, which was indeed noble 
of her. Then Kittie James caught cold and 
’most got pneumonia from walking in her rubber 
undervest and getting overheated and sitting 
in a draught afterward; and I got so tired walk- 
ing five miles every day, with books on my head 
instead of in my hand, where they should be, 
that I couldn’t sleep nights and almost had 
nervous prostration. 

But the worst thing of all happened without 
any of us noticing it at the time except Sister 
Irmingarde. Of course she noticed it. Sister 
Irmingarde really notices everything we do even 
when her eyes and her thoughts seem to be on 
higher things. All I was thinking of these days 
was how to do everything I had to do in class 
and on my beauty list. It took every minute 
of my spare time, and as things seemed to be 
the same with the other girls no one saw much 
of any one else. Besides, no one wanted to. I 
got so I didn’t even care to meet one of the class 
on the grounds, for as soon as I did she stood 
me up against a tree or something and looked me 
over to see if I was making progress. And 
while she did it she repeated all my imperfections 
till I got dreadfully tired hearing about them. 

All the girls were bad enough, but the girls of 
my special set were the worst. You see, they loved 
120 


BEAUTY CULTURE 


me most, so of course they could say the hardest 
things. When they did that I told them all 
over again about their faults, and by the time 
we separated every one was angry. I got so I hid 
when I saw any of them coming, and a good 
many other girls seemed to feel the way I did 
about it. So instead of seeing groups scattered 
over the convent grounds, as in the dear old days 
of last month, everywhere I looked I saw one 
girl alone. Sometimes she was taking calisthenic 
exercises. Sometimes she was practising a state- 
ly walk, with her chin up and her shoulders back. 
Sometimes she was giving herself facial massage. 
Sometimes she was inhaling and exhaling five 
hundred deep breaths, as Janet Trelawney had 
to do every night and morning. Sometimes I 
would see Mabel Muriel Murphy under the willow 
with a mirror in her hand practising ‘^assuming 
an intelligent expression.” Mabel Muriel had to 
do that every day. But whoever the girl was, 
and whatever she was doing, she was alone. 
The only time the girls of our class got together 
was during recitation-hours or in the study-hall. 

At such times Sister Irmingarde studied us 
with her quiet, watchful, thoughful look, which 
grew a little more serious as the days went on. 
Once or twice when I glanced at her I noticed 
that she had caught a bit of her lower lip between 

I2I 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


her teeth, which was a way she had when she 
was puzzled and was thinking something out. At 
last she sent for me and asked me why I was 
alone so much of late. I told her frankly that 
it was because I was the victim of painful 
physical blemishes which distressed my dear 
friends, so I was keeping by myself till I got over 
them. Then she sent for Mabel Blossom and 
asked the same question, and Mabel said she 
had twisted her features so much that she was 
ashamed to let her classmates see them. After 
that she sent for Mabel Muriel Murphy and 
Maudie Joyce and Kittie James. 

Mabel Muriel told Sister Irmingarde she had 
decided never again to associate with her dear 
classmates till she had acquired a bright, in- 
telligent expression; but she said she didn't 
mind being alone because she didn’t care as 
much for the girls as she used to. Maudie said 
the conversation of the other girls had become 
so personal lately that it had made her nervous 
and she didn’t enjoy talking any more. Kittie 
James told Sister Irmingarde she never looked in 
a mirror any more without seeing herself as 
others saw her, and Kittie cried and said she 
would die if she couldn’t get thin and beautiful 
like the ancient Greeks. After that the whole 
story came out, and Sister Irmingarde discov- 
122 


BEAUTY CULTURE 


ered that every single girl in our set had got 
the idea that all the other girls hated to look 
at her. As this is a most unpleasant feeling it 
was making some of them sick and all of them 
nervous. 

When Sister Irmingarde ordered our entire 
class to report to her in the study-hall at eight 
o’clock that night we suspected what was going 
to happen — and it happened. 

First she gave us a general talk about beauty 
and told how it was in the eye of the behold- 
er. She discussed what she called its ‘‘rel- 
ative importance” and described the mental 
qualities that were more desirable than beauty, 
and told what beauty of character meant. 
She spoke about personal neatness as a hand- 
maid of beauty, and all the girls turned and 
gazed admiringly at me; and of the charm of 
animation, and they looked at Mabel Blossom; 
and of dignity of carriage and manner, and they 
gazed at Maudie Joyce. Before she got through 
she had made every girl there feel better — more 
comfortable, you know. Then she forbade us 
to make even the slightest criticism of one 
another’s appearance in future. Every girl 
drew a long breath of relief, as if a heavy weight 
had been lifted from her heart. For it is indeed 
true that the more one loves one’s dear friends 
123 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


the harder it is to have them tell one about one’s 
faults. As a literary artist I really knew this 
all the time. But I had forgotten about it till 
the girls began to tell me my faults, and then 
it was too late. 

That night, after the Great Silence fell, Kittie 
James crept along the halls to my room. Her 
sister had sent her a box that very day. Kittie 
had a chocolate cake in one hand and a jelly 
layer cake in the other, and she had to put them 
both down on the floor before she could open 
my door. The pockets of her bath robe were 
filled with fudge. She sat on the edge of my 
bed and I sat up among the pillows, and we ate 
this nourishing food and talked in whispers. 
Kittie said she would have died in two weeks 
more if our beauty-work had gone on. She 
said she was never going to pursue beauty again, 
but she was going to make her character so lovely 
that the girls wouldn’t mind how fat she was. 
It was a little hard to follow her noble resolu- 
tions because her mouth was full of chocolate 
cake. But, in spite of the cake, some things 
came out so clearly that I was afraid they would 
wake Adeline Thurston, who slept in the next 
room. 

Kittie said that lately she had been thinking 
very seriously indeed about the ancient Greeks. 

124 


BEAUTY CULTURE 

She said that even yet she didn’t really believe 
in them; but if there ever had been any, and if 
they really had pursued beauty, she was sure 
she knew exactly what had caused their decline 
and fall. 

‘‘Probably they told each other they were 
too fat and what was wrong with their fea- 
tures,” Kittie said. “Of course that made the 
strong ones kill the weak ones, right off*. Then 
the strong ones tried beauty-treatments and 
flesh-reduction and things like that for a while 
— and just died of despair!” 

I looked at Kittie with deep respect. At 
last I understood why George Morgan loved 
to talk to her. As I have oft said, she is not a 
brilliant student. But she has a way of thinking 
things out all by herself — and ever and anon she 
surprises one by the utterance of what Sister 
Irmingarde calls “a deep and vital truth.” 


/ 


VI 


T 


MABEL BLOSSOM S PEARL PIN 

chapter has a moral, but that 
should not prevent the gentle reader 
from reading it. Besides, the moral 
comes at the very end, and there 
will be a great deal of interest and 
literary entertainment in between. 
So “we will proceed without further digression,” 
as Sister Irmingarde says in the history class 
when we girls forget dates and try to divert 
her mind by analyzing Louis XVI.’s charac- 
ter. It is really interesting to analyze, for he 
was in many ways a weak and sinful man; but 
Sister Irmingarde always looks so bored when we 
try it, and so anxious to know about the Punic 
wars or something, that it’s dreadfully discourag- 
ing to earnest students who want to develop 
their minds as fast as they can by intelligent 
exchange of thought. 

This leads us straight to Mabel Blossom’s 
pearl pin. The reader doesn’t know why, but 
126 


MABEL BLOSSOM’S PIN 


I do, so it’s all right. You see, it was in the his- 
tory class that Mabel Blossom suddenly took a 
little box out of her pocket one day and passed 
it stealthily along the aisles from one girl to 
another, making signs that we were all to look 
at what was in it. We did, right ofF. Most 
of the girls would look long and earnestly at 
anything that would divert their minds in class, 
and this thing Mabel was showing was jewelry . 
So the girls gazed and gazed, and nodded to 
Mabel to show they liked it, until I thought 
it would never get to me. 

Finally it did, and I found the box was not 
new, and the thing in it was a gold pin, not new 
either, lying on a piece of cotton. It was round 
and had pearls in it, with a red stone in the 
middle, and there was a pin in the back to fasten 
it to any part of the happy possessor where it 
would look best. I got behind my book and 
tried it under my chin, against my collar, but 
of course I couldn’t see how it looked. Then I 
tried it on my left shoulder like a badge, and 
I could just see it there by squinting. 

I took my time, for the Sisters have taught us 
that it’s underbred to seem hurried. I thought 
Kittie James, whose turn to look came next, 
would die of agitation before I passed it on to 
her; but I knew waiting would be a lesson in 
127 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


self-control for Kittle, and she needed one. 
Kittie gets terribly excited about clothes and 
jewelry, especially jewelry. We’re not allowed 
to wear much jewelry at the convent, except 
a watch, if we have one, or a confirmation 
ring, or some other possession fraught with 
family associations, as it were. Kittie has a 
ring and a tiny watch the nuns let her wear, 
and sometimes she is allowed to put on a thin 
gold chain with a cross on it, that her sister 
Josephine gave her; but usually she has to keep 
it in a bureau drawer. Sometimes, in the even- 
ing, when Kittie and Mabel Blossom and Mabel 
Muriel Murphy and Maudie Joyce and I are to- 
gether, Kittie borrows every piece of jewelry 
we have, and puts them all on at once, and 
then stands in front of the looking-glass for half 
an hour at a time, pretending she’s a Hindu 
princess, decorated with one watch and four 
chains and five rings. I mention this to reveal 
one phase of Kittie’s character. 

Finally I took pity on Kittie and passed the 
pin on to her very carefully, so Sister Irmingarde 
wouldn’t be disturbed by seeing it; and Kittie 
fussed over it for ten minutes before she gave it 
to the girl next to her. That was the only time 
I ever handled the pin and got a really close look 
at it. The rest of the time it was on Mabel 
128 


MABEL BLOSSOM’S PIN 


— until it vanished from our gaze in the tragic 
way I will describe when I get round to it. 

When everybody had seen the pin that morn- 
ing, Mabel Blossom got it back again and fast- 
ened it on her blouse, and all the girls made signs 
showing that it was becoming, and that they 
wished they had one, too; and Kittie James, 
who was reciting, told Sister Irmingarde that the 
most significant thing about the Greeks was their 
love of pearl pins. But nobody minded, be- 
cause it was Kittie. Then ’most everybody 
forgot the pin except Mabel. She couldn’t, be- 
cause she had it on. 

At noon Mabel explained that her aunt had 
sent it to her for her sixteenth birthday, and that 
her aunt had worn it for years, and that Sister 
Irmingarde had said Mabel could wear it, as she 
was not wearing any other jewelry. She wore 
it for a week, and we girls got used to it and to 
the effect of elegance it gave Mabel. Once she 
lent it to Adeline Thurston, to cheer her up when 
she was going to confession and had to tell some- 
thing she didn’t care to dwell on. Another time 
she let Maudie Joyce wear it to the station when 
she went there to meet a friend — and Kittie James 
had it on half a dozen times. But usually it shone 
like a small, pale, cold moon on Mabel Blossom’s 
chest, and we all got used to seeing it there. 

129 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


Then one day she lost it. 

I put that in a paragraph by itself to show 
how important it is. It is also the real beginning 
of this chapter. The rest was the orchestra 
playing and the lights being turned on and the 
curtain going up before the drama. 

The drama started in to be a tragedy right 
ofF. Mabel Blossom was simply crazy over the 
loss of her pin, and every girl at St. Catharine’s 
sympathized with her so much that no one learned 
any lessons for days. I can get my lessons 
by reading them once, but even I had to tell 
Sister Irmingarde that I couldn’t study, for every 
time I opened my book I saw Mabel’s pale, 
stricken face before me. She looked dreadful, 
and her eyes were red all the time, partly from 
looking for the pearl pin and partly from crying 
about it. The whole convent helped her to 
look. 

At first she thought she had lost it down by 
the river one day when we went there for ferns. 
So the entire river-front was ’most wrecked by the 
girls, who made up searching-parties and spent 
hours hunting for Mabel’s pin. The little 
Minims looked, too, and tore up grass and flowers 
by the roots, lest they leave some spot untouched. 
None of the Minims had seen the pin, and Mabel 
couldn’t talk about it now without bursting into 
130 


MABEL BLOSSOM’S PIN 


tears; but the older girls told them how it looked 
as they remembered it, and for a while it seemed 
to me that every girl at St. Catharine’s spent her 
time either describing Mabel Blossom’s lost pin 
or listening to some one else describe it. In the 
mean time the pin stayed lost. 

Then Mabel remembered that she had been 
sitting under the great willow on the campus 
the day she missed it, and everybody rushed to 
the willow and looked for it there. By the time 
they got through, the grass under the tree was 
trampled into the earth or torn up by the roots, 
and the benches were scratched, and the moss 
was eyen pulled olF the bark of the willow. 
Maudie Joyce did that. She said you could 
never tell where things would slip to, and it 
would be too utterly horrible if Mabel never 
found her pin. Maudie said she remembered 
exactly how the pin looked. It was about as 
large as a fifty-cent piece, and had sixteen lovely 
pearls in it. She said no one could afford to 
lose a pin like that, and an heirloom besides, and 
she was going to hunt for it in all her spare 
time. 

Kittie James was sure Mabel had lost the pin 
in her own room, and would find it under the rug 
or behind some piece of furniture. So she 
and Mabel took up the rugs and moved the 

131 


MAY,I VERSON TACKLES LIFE 

furniture out into the hall, and took down the 
curtains, and even pulled olF the wall-paper in 
places where it bulged a little and looked as if 
it might have a pearl pin behind it. Kittie 
wrote Josephine about the pin and described it. 
She said it was the size of k silver dollar, and had 
twenty-four pearls in it. 

Josephine wrote back that Mabel ought to 
advertise; so Mabel did. She didn’t offer a 
reward, because she knew she could never make 
any proper financial return to the noble soul 
that brought it back. But she said it was a 
priceless heirloom with a history. 

The Sisters hadn’t paid much attention to the 
loss of the pin until the advertisement came out. 
Then they got interested. Sister Edna asked 
Mabel Muriel Murphy about it, and Mabel 
Muriel told Sister Edna all she had heard about 
the pin. She said Mabel Blossom’s aunt was 
a very wealthy woman, and that the pin had 
been handed down to her by her great-aunt. 
Next, Sister Irmingarde asked me about it. 
She hadn’t really looked at the pin when Mabel 
asked permission to wear it, as she supposed it 
was some trifle. I told her all I knew, which 
wasn’t much, and finally Reverend Mother sent 
for Adeline Thurston and asked searching ques- 
tions about the pin. Adeline told her what the 
132 


REVEREND MOTHER ASKED SEARCHING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PIN 



t, 

' 






\ 



MABEL BLOSSOM’S PIN 

pin looked like. She said the twenty-four pearls 
were about the size of large currants, but the 
real value of the pin was its history. She told 
Reverend Mother that Adeline Thurston’s friend 
in Chicago knew Mabel’s mother, and that an 
Indian rajah had given the pin to Mabel’s 
great-great-grandaunt, and that the ruby in it 
was supposed to be the central jewel of his crown. 
After that a panic swept through our erstwhile 
peaceful halls. 

The Sisters were more sure than ever that girls 
should not wear jewels, so they took away every- 
thing but watches, and locked their booty in 
the convent safe. Mabel Blossom gave up even 
trying to study, and roamed around the convent 
grounds like a lost soul, looking everywhere for 
her pearl pin, and moaning soft, low moans. 
The girls spent all their free time helping her, 
and the campus looked as if a cyclone had 
come to search for the pin, too. No one 
talked about anything but Mabel Blossom’s loss. 
Every girl wrote home about the pin, and de- 
scribed it to her parents, and told about the In- 
dian rajah, and the mothers wrote back advice 
^ and suggestions, and told all they knew about 
i Indian jewelry. Mabel Blossom couldn’t eat 
by this time, and the infirmarians got up tempt- 
ing dishes and sent them to her. Then she 

133 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


couldn’t sleep, and they took her into the in- 
firmary and nursed her tenderly. But she 
wouldn’t stay there long — she was too anxious 
to look for the pearl pin. The old gardeners 
were going crazy over the way the grounds were 
being torn up, and Sister Italia pasted a notice 
in the study-hall, threatening to suspend any 
girls who tore more paper off their walls or pulled 
up more boards. 

Little by little more facts came out about the 
pearl pin. The rajah had fallen in love with 
Mabel Blossom’s great-great-great-grandaunt, 
and had longed to wed her. But her heart was 
another’s, so he sent her as a wedding-gift the 
wonderful Indian pin which brought health and 
fortune to the family that possessed it, and 
ruin if they lost it. Once it had been lost for 
fifty years, and the Blossoms were terribly poor 
and in disgrace the whole time. Then they got 
it back, and all was well again. 

You can imagine how thrilling this was to 
convent girls. Could aught be more romantic? 
Adeline Thurston wrote a poem about it, and 
Janet Trelawney set it to music. I began 
a novel, with Mabel’s pearl pin in the very 
center of the plot, as it was in the center of 
the rajah’s crown. Then, through the adver- 
tisement or the talk of the girls, or perhaps both, 

134 


MABEL BLOSSOM’S PIN 


the newspapers began to print things about the 
pin. A reporter came to see Mabel, but she was 
in the infirmary, so Maudie saw him instead; 
and the next day the paper came out with big, 
black head-lines: 

THE RAJAH’S JEWEL AT ST. CATHARINE’S 

A CONVENT GIRL POSSESSES AND LOSES THE GREATEST 
RUBY IN THE INDIAN EMPIRE 

The article went on to describe Mabel’s pin 
and tell about the rajah, and it criticized the 
Blossom family severely for putting the price- 
less gem into a school-girl’s hands. It said the 
jewel had probably been stolen by a pair of 
famous London thieves who were ‘‘operating” 
in America and had heard about the ruby and 
the pearls. 

That started the other newspapers, and the 
next day they came out with stories about the 
rajah’s ruby. They said it brought blood and 
disaster in its wake, and one of them printed a 
list of the deaths in the Blossom family during 
the past fifty years, and laid every blessed one 
of them to the ruby. Another newspaper said 
the ruby had blazed for a time in the haik of 
Bou Maza, the leader of an Arab rebellion in 
Algeria, and that when he wore it he bore a 
10 135 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


charmed life and no bullets hit him, but as soon 
as it was stolen from him he was slain. 

By this time the convent grounds were full 
of reporters and photographers who wouldn’t 
go away, and detectives who wanted to find the 
jewel and the thieves. Some parents got excited 
and came to St. Catharine’s to find out what it 
all meant and what the effect would be on their 
children. For the worst thing of all had hap- 
pened by this time. The newspapers and the 
detectives were beginning to hint that perhaps 
one of the girls had taken the pin. They didn’t 
say it right out, but they came pretty near it, 
and when that happened you can imagine how 
we girls felt. Every one knew how much Kittie 
James loved jewelry, so one or two girls who were 
jealous of her — but I won’t even write that. 
It is too horrible. 

We held an indignation meeting, and most 
of the girls were crying when it was over. The 
nuns felt the worst of all — for us and for the 
school. Nothing like this had ever happened be- 
fore in the long and honorable history of St. 
Catharine’s. Reverend Mother looked actually 
haggard when we met her in the halls, and Sister 
Irmingarde went around with her mouth in a 
straight line and her eyes as cold as agate. 
Usually she smiles a great deal — and she has the 
136 


MABEL BLOSSOM’S PIN 


most wonderful smile I know, beginning at her 
lips and spreading first to her eyes and then over 
the whole room. It makes one feel young and 
inexperienced, but good and noble and tender 
and ambitious and, most of all, understood. 
You know she is looking into the very bottom of 
your soul, and you don’t mind having her do 
it. At least that’s the way / feel. But no one 
had a chance to feel that way for a long time 
after Mabel lost her pin — for the saddest thing 
in all those sad days was that Sister Mary 
Irmingarde stopped smiling. But she was simply 
lovely to Kittie James, and so were most of the 
girls; and Kittie was the only girl at St. 
Catharine’s who didn’t know why. 

A few days after the newspapers began to 
print things about the pin a big Sunday news- 
paper came out with a picture of it. The picture 
showed the pin filling the center of the page. 
It was about the size of a dinner-plate, and had 
rays of light going from the ruby in the middle 
and spreading all over the rest of the sheet. 
There was a picture of Mabel, too — made up and 
not a bit like her; for of course the newspapers 
were not allowed to have her photograph. 
The article around the picture told how many 
Blossoms were left, and what would probably 
happen to them now that the pin was gone. 

137 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


It described Mabel’s brother, who is a civil 
engineer working on the Panama Canal, and it 
said that her mother and the rest of the family 
were in Europe. Then it asked in big letters, 
“Will They Ever Come Back?” 

Mabel shrieked when she saw that, and was 
led to the infirmary in a dreadful attack of hys- 
terics; and Kittie James, who saw her go into it, 
and who is very sympathetic, had hysterics, too, 
right off, and was taken to the infirmary at the 
same time. This started some of the other girls, 
and you’d better believe that for a few minutes 
Sister Irmingarde had her hands full. 

We were all ready for hysterics now. At 
first, even sorry as we were for Mabel, a good 
many of the girls almost enjoyed the excitement. 
It made things different from our usual quiet 
life, and girls love a change, even if it’s almost an 
unpleasant one. I felt a little bit that way, 
though I was sorry for Mabel. Besides, being a 
Literary Artist, I saw the dramatic possibilities in 
her loss, and the human, vivid life it brought into 
our cloister-halls made my girlish pulses throb. 
But it is a strange truth that one can get tired 
even of thrills. If one is thrilling all the time, 
it isn’t really thrills, you see; it is monotony. 
Besides, our nerves were getting jumpy. When 
the newspapers began to hint that perhaps one 
138 


MABEL BLOSSOM’S PIN 


of us had taken it — ^well, we were anxious enough 
to forget Mabel’s pin and return to the peaceful 
atmosphere of the intellectual life. No one even 
mentioned the pin any more. Finally we almost 
disliked Mabel. She knew it, too, and she told 
me one day she was like one of the specimen 
bugs the girls in the nature classes pinned in 
their rooms. She said she felt exactly as 
if she had been fastened up before us all 
with her pearl pin stuck through her. I felt 
sorry for her, but for a long time, even af- 
ter that, my first thought was when I saw 
her: 

‘‘Horrors! here’s Mabel coming.” 

Then I would go down inside of my brain and 
find another thought and drag it up quickly and 
make it run like this: “Poor girl, she is not to 
blame for the strange and terrible position in 
which she has placed us all!” 

I got so I could do it, but the other girls 
couldn’t, though I tried to teach them how. 
Maudie said she simply couldn’t bear the sight 
of Mabel any more, and Mabel Muriel Murphy 
felt the same way. Naturally poor Mabel suf- 
fered more than ever when she found this out, 
and she would have gone home if she had had any 
home to go to. But with her brother at Panama 
and the rest of the family in Europe and the house 

139 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


closed, there was nothing to do but stay in school 
and try to be brave. Kittie was the only girl 
who was the same to Mabel right through; 
but you see there were things Kittie didn’t know, 
or Mabel, either. 

One Saturday afternoon, about a month after 
the pin was lost, Mabel sent a Minim to me with 
a note asking me to come to her room. She was 
going to put new yokes in two silk blouses, and 
she wanted me to help, because when I don’t 
the yokes bulge out. It is strange indeed how 
many different things I can do and how few 
things other girls can do — well, I mean. I went 
to Mabel, though I didn’t really want to, and I 
found her on her knees before a trunk which she 
had just emptied. The floor was covered with 
clothes she had taken out of it. While she was 
talking to me she shook out a blouse she had 
picked up, and when she was going to put it 
down again I saw the gleam of something on 
it. I stopped her, a strange, mysterious in- 
stinct stirring in me the while. 

“What’s that?” I asked. I took the blouse out 
of her hands and looked at it, and as I looked 
I could feel my eyes bulge right out of my face, 
I was making them look so hard. On the left 
shoulder of Mabel’s blouse there was a little 
round thing. I gazed at it and then gazed at 
140 


MABEL BLOSSOM’S PIN 


Mabel, and then we both gazed at the thing again, 
and gazed and gazed. 

The thing was a pin about the size of a silver 
twenty-five-cent piece. It had six tiny seed- 
pearls in a circle round it — the kind that are 
halves^ stuck on. In the center of the circle was 
a red stone a little larger than any of the pearls. 
It was a garnet. The pearls looked dark, as 
if they were soiled or stained in some way; the 
fastener of the pin was bent where Mabel had 
pinned it to her blouse. 

Once more I looked at Mabel. She was look- 
ing at me. And as we looked at each other the 
same words fell from our pale lips in hollow, 
incredulous tones: 

‘‘Is that the rajah’s pin?” 

It wasn’t finding the pin that surprised us. 
It didn’t even surprise us that Mabel had worn 
the pin on this particular blouse, and put away 
the blouse until she had time to put a fresh yoke 
in it, and then forgotten all about it. That 
was all natural enough — for Mabel Blossom — 
and both Mabel and I knew it was, and didn’t 
stop to fuss about it. The thing that surprised 
us was the way that pearl pin looked! 

Of course I knew it wasn’t the size of a dinner- 
plate, as the newspapers had made it. But I 
did expect to see it at least the size of a silver 
141 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


dollar, with twenty-four great big pearls in it 
and a blazing ruby that dazzled the eyes. I 
almost remembered it that way. And there lay 
that little, cheap, shabby pin, looking ashamed 
of itself, and actually seeming to bury itself in 
the blouse, as if it wanted to get away from our 
staring, horrified eyes. I couldn’t think. My 
brain acted as if it said to itself, ‘^This is too 
much for me,” and then turned its back coldly 
on me and the pin. 

While I kept looking at Mabel, in the stupid, 
dazed way I felt, she turned her eyes away and 
sat staring straight in front of her. Finally she 
said, ‘‘I can’t believe it looks like that,” and then 
she repeated over and over and over again: 

‘‘What shall I do? What shall I do?” And 
at last she burst into tears. 

I couldn’t tell her what to do. But I knew 
who could. There was just one person in the 
whole world who could advise us in such a crisis 
of life as this. Need I tell the gentle reader who 
it was? No. I had to tell Mabel Blossom, but 
that was because her mind was clouded by de- 
spair. 

“Take it to Sister Irmingarde,” I said. We 
did. 

We found her alone in her class-room, marking 
some papers, and we laid the pin down on her 
142 


MABEL BLOSSOM’S PIN 


desk, blouse and all, exactly as we had found it. 
For a second she sat staring at it and at us. 
Then she spoke to us in short, staccato tones, 
strangely different from her usual way of talking. 

“What’s this?” she said. And before we could 
answer, “What’s this?” 

Mabel couldn’t reply, so I answered for her. 

“It’s the rajah’s pin. Sister,” I said, dully, 
“with the blazing ruby from the center of his 
crown.” 

The words sounded silly, but I said them from 
habit. We hadn’t heard much else said, you 
know, for a month. / 

Sister Irmingarde gave the pin one more look. 
Also, she looked at us as we stood, solemn-eyed 
and awe-struck, before her. Then she folded 
her arms on her desk and laid her head down on 
them — and laughed and laughed and laughed. 
Once before Mabel Blossom and I had seen her 
do that when we stood before her together. 
Perhaps you remember when, gentle reader, but 
I hope you don’t. That time we couldn’t laugh 
with her, but this time we could. At least I 
could; and I did. I began, and finally Mabel 
joined in, but not very heartily, and pretty soon 
Mabel could not stop because she was so nervous. 
That made Sister Irmingarde stop in a hurry. 

After supper that evening Sister Irmingarde 

143 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


called the older girls together and gave us a 
little talk in the study-hall. First of all she 
told us the pin was found, and she explained how 
Mabel had put away her blouse and forgotten 
it. Then she waited for the applause to die 
away. It took a long time, for the girls were 
delighted on their own account and Kittie’s, 
and glad, too, on Mabel’s. They all kept 
nodding and smiling at Mabel while they clapped. 

When they finally quieted down. Sister Irmin- 
garde held up the pin. The girls looked, but 
they couldn’t see it, so she marched them up 
to her desk six at a time. She called out their 
names, and they went to her and looked and 
stared and stared, and then looked at one an- 
other. Nobody said much. Nobody could. 
After they had all seen it. Sister Irmingarde put 
the pin down on the desk and stood up. We 
knew what that meant. She was going to give 
us what she calls “a few thoughts to take away.” 
Someway, when she does that, I can feel my 
brain bulge as I listen. 

She said she had received a letter from Mabel’s 
mother that day, written in Paris, in answer to 
one Sister Irmingarde had written her. Mrs. 
Blossom said no rajah had ever seen the pin. 
She said it was bought at the World’s Fair in 
Chicago, and had cost about four dollars. Sister 
144 


MABEL BLOSSOM’S PIN 


Irmingarde let that sink in. Then, very gently, 
but in words that lingered in our girlish minds a 
long, long time, she told us the moral of our 
strange experience. 

But, after all, need I repeat the moral to the 
gentle but intelligent reader, and thus, as it 
were, paint the lily.f* 

I wot not. 


VII 


THE CALL OF SPRING 

ENNYSON says that in the spring 
one’s fancy “lightly turns to thoughts 
of love.” Usually I agree with the 
poets. This time I don’t — and I 
ought to know. Besides, all the 
other girls at St. Catharine’s agree 
with me — Maudie Joyce, and Mabel Blossom, 
and Mabel Muriel Murphy, and Kittie James, 
and the rest. We’ve watched three springs now 
to see if our fancies turned to thoughts of love 
and they never have. What they turn to are 
thoughts of the woods and fields, and spring 
flowers, and new clothes, and Easter examina- 
tions — but especially to the woods and fields. 

In the winter our convent grounds are big 
enough for any one. They are very large, with 
a river flowing through them, and they stretch 
away off* to the place where the sky comes down 
to meet them. They have the most beautiful 
nooks everywhere, too — places where you can 
146 



THE CALL OF SPRING 


go alone and weep and think about life. But 
in the spring, someway, the grounds begin to con- 
tract, like the magic skin on the man in Mr. 
Balzac’s story. All the lovely things seem to lie 
outside. The wild pigeons fly over us without 
stopping. The pickerel in the river swim past 
as fast as they can, as if they had important en- 
gagements somewhere else. The songs of the 
bluebirds come from far away. Then we girls 
begin to remember rules and boundaries and to 
feel shut in and restless. 

Of course we’re not allowed to go outside of 
the grounds except in nature classes with our 
teachers or by special permission, which the nuns 
only give with slow and grudging words. When 
they have reluctantly uttered these, we can 
go into town on the trolley to buy gloves or 
dental floss or rubbers, with our eyes straight 
ahead and some girl in the graduating class 
tagging along and looking tired and all the 
pleasure of the occasion spoiled. 

This spring we felt even more cramped than 
usual. Just as soon as the snow went and the 
ice in the river melted and the pussy-willows 
began to come out, I got dreadfully tired of 
books and Welsh rarebits and fudge and writing 
stories and other intellectual pursuits. I used 
to go clear around the main building, outside, 

147 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


so I wouldn’t have to walk down the central 
hall and hear nine girls practising Mendelssohn’s 
“Spring Song” all at once on nine different 
pianos in nine little music-rooms. I knew places 
in the woods where the arbutus and hepatica 
were just beginning to wonder whether they could 
come up; I knew where the wind flowers could be 
found and where the first blackbirds would 
build their nests. I knew exactly how the young 
birch saplings looked, with the^ snow melting 
on their white arms; and I kept thinking of these 
things and wishing I could go and see them 
instead of shutting my eyes and imagining 
them and smelling the steam heat and Sister 
Italia’s wax polish at the same time. 

One morning, late in March, while I was sitting 
in the study-hall right after breakfast trying to 
study, but really thinking all these different 
thoughts and some more besides, Maudie Joyce 
opened the door. She looked excited; her eyes 
were shining and her cheeks were pink. We’re 
not allowed to speak in the study-hall, so she 
beckoned to me to come out of the room; and 
Mabel Blossom and Mabel Muriel Murphy got 
right up and came, too, just as if Maudie had 
beckoned to them. Maudie seemed glad to see 
them. She always likes to talk to as many girls 
as she can at the same time. She seems to 
148 


THE CALL OF SPRING 


think one girl canT understand all she says, even 
when I am that girl. I have tried to remove 
this error from her mind, but in vain. The 
minute we appeared she began to talk, but very 
softly, so the pupils in the study-hall wouldn’t 
be disturbed. 

‘‘Oh, girls!” she said, “Fve just been down 
to St. Agatha’s shrine. Guess what I saw there!” 

We guessed. I asked if it was a great author 
or lecturer visiting the shrine. Mabel Muriel 
Murphy, who is very pious, thought it was a new 
morning star or a halo or some other kind of a 
miracle. Mabel Blossom hoped it was a golf- 
club she had lost the day before. But Maudie 
didn’t listen much to what any of us thought. 
She never does. 

“It was a wrenr^ she said. “The darlingest 
little wren you ever saw!” 

We all talked at once, right ofF. This was 
only the last week in March, and wrens don’t 
come to our part of the country till May. We 
knew poor Maudie was mistaken and we told 
her so. Mabel Blossom said perhaps she had 
seen a hawk. Maudie talked at the same time 
in hurt, indignant tones and louder than we did, 
so at last we stopped. 

“I guess I know a wren from a sparrow or a 
robin,” she said. “Or a hawk! Of course he’s 
149 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


early. That’s the lovely part of it. That’s why 
I’m telling you about him. He was on the back 
of the’seat near the shrine, very close to me, and I 
looked at him a long time. He seemed dread- 
fully cold and kind of pale, but so brave; and 
he cocked his little head at me in the cutest way. 
While I was watching him he flew oflF to the 
hazel hedge just beyond the boundary wall, so I 
couldn’t follow.” 

‘‘Let’s go and see,” suggested Mabel Blossom, 
with simple brevity. “If he is pale I’ve got to. 
I never saw a pale wren.” 

We were all thinking that very thing, but 
Mabel got it out first. Mabel Muriel Murphy 
looked at her watch. She’s the only one of us 
who has a watch, but she doesn’t pull it out now 
as much as .she used to when first she came to 
St. Catharine’s. She said it was fifteen minutes 
of nine and that she didn’t think we had time to 
go anywhere; but even while she was speaking 
the rest of us rushed for our hats and coats 
and started without waiting for any more words, 
so Mabel Muriel rushed too. She’s afraid to 
be in things and she hates to be left out. It’s 
a wearing nature to have. Mabel Muriel has 
terrible struggles with conscience and remorse, 
but she never really misses anything. 

As we went down the steps we met Kittie 
150 


THE CALL OF SPRING 


James, just back from her special breakfast in 
the infirmary. Kittie’s stomach has been more 
delicate than ever since I reduced her, so she has 
to have fruit and cereal and steak and chops and 
eggs for breakfast. As soon as she knew where 
we were going she said she would come, too. 
The five of us went toward St. Agatha’s shrine, 
walking as fast as we could, but in a very digni- 
fied way, with our shoulders back and our chins 
up, because we were likely at any minute to 
meet some of the Sisters on the campus. They 
walk so well themselves, and they are so par- 
ticular about the way we walk, that it makes our 
meetings quite painful sometimes when they 
ought to be just pleasant occasions. 

It was the most satisfying kind of a day — not 
bright, but interesting. The sky was grayish 
blue, like a clean, new slate, with darker gray 
clouds drifting over it and a little patch of yellow 
showing every few minutes when the sun peeped 
out. There were bits of snow on the ground 
here and there; but it was melting fast, and the 
earth was like miles of blotting-paper soaked 
in brownish water; the grass was beginning to 
look green, and the buds on the trees were burst- 
ing with fatness. Before I had drawn three 
deep breaths I felt young again; sometimes I feel 
as if sixteen is a very old age. We were away 
11 iSi 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


from the campus now, so we had dropped our 
chins and settled down to quick walking and we 
saved our breath for that and didn’t talk. There 
was no sound except our footsteps as we squashed 
into the water or broke a twig or slipped on a 
little snow patch; but I could ’most hear the 
voices of the flowers underneath calling up: 
‘‘Wait for us, girls. We’re coming! We’re 
coming! Wait for us; we’re coming through!” 

I was so afraid I’d step on some brave green 
head that every now and then I jumped, think- 
ing I saw one. The other girls laughed at me, 
but I noticed that they were careful, too. Think 
of stepping on a baby hepatica when it had just 
painfully poked one eye through the hard earth! 
It would make me sick if I did such a thing. 

When we got to the shrine we saw that spring 
was there before us. The gardeners had been 
working, and the steps leading up to it and the 
rustic seats around it were cleaned and freshened. 
The shrine is at one end of the grounds; it and 
the old stone wall behind it mark what the girls 
call “the southern bound.” 

We climbed over the wall. It was covered 
with hard and prickly blackberry vines and wood- 
bine and ivy, and the first thing we met was a 
little squirrel who was climbing at the same time. 
I suppose we scared him ’most to death, though 
152 


THE CALL OF SPRING 


of course we didn’t mean to. Then we went on 
toward a line of hazel-bushes huddled together 
in a hollow in a distant meadow. That’s where 
Maudie said her wren had flown, and, sure 
enough, when we got nearer we saw a bunched- 
up feathery ball on one of the bushes and 
Maudie was vindicated. There he was, looking 
cold and thin, but the sweetest thing you ever 
saw — and so lonesome, the poor dear. That’s 
what Maudie meant, I guess, by saying he was 
pale. We gasped and gazed at him with delight 
and told him how plucky he was to come so 
early. He seemed to think he ought to do 
something to entertain us, so he began a sulky 
little song — not his free, glad spring song,- but 
a kind of twittering pipe to show he knew that 
he had visitors and that he was a little gentle- 
man, and he polkaed about on the branch the 
way they do, with his little tail going like mad. 

You can imagine how that charmed us. We 
forgot about school and nine o’clock and every- 
thing else except our wren. Kittie James 
always has cookies in her pocket. She pulled 
one out now, a big one, with currants in it, and 
broke it into pieces and scattered them near the 
hazel copse. Then we waited to see if he would 
come for breakfast, but he only cocked one eye 
at us and went on twittering. Maudie Joyce, 

153 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


who has studied about birds, said he was calling 
for a mate, but of course there wasn’t any around 
to answer him. He was just a homesick little 
troubadour all alone in a new world. We felt 
dreadfully sorry for him, so we decided to help 
him as much as we could. 

“When he finds a mate he’ll want a home,” 
Kittie James said. “Let’s have the material 
all ready. Then, when he has won his bride, 
he can come and get it.” 

I took a red ribbon off my hair and dropped 
it on one of the bushes, where he would be sure 
to find it when he was ready to build a nest. 
Maudie Joyce tore a piece olF her clean hand- 
kerchief and put it there, too. Kittie James, 
who has a warm and sympathetic heart for 
animals, said she was ’most sure he’d rather 
have some long human hairs to build with than 
anything else. She told Mabel Blossom she 
could pull them out of Mabel’s head without 
Mabel’s feeling it. Mabel didn’t think she 
could, but she took off her hat and let Kittie 
try. Kittie selected a little lock of hair and 
held it in her right hand down close to the roots 
and we all stood around and watched with eager 
eyes. Then just before she pulled the lock out 
Kittie gave Mabel a dreadful slap on her face 
with her left hand. When Mabel was able to 

154 


THE CALL OF SPRING 


speak Kittie showed her the hairs and asked if 
she had felt them come; Mabel hadn’t, so you 
see the experiment was a success. Kittie is 
developing all the time. Sometimes I can 
hardly realize that she is the immature child 
of twelve who came to St. Catharine’s almost 
four years ago. 

We were all so interested about the hair that 
we forgot to be quiet, and Mabel had shrieked 
over Kittie’s slap; but the wren didn’t seem to 
mind us. Perhaps he thought nothing could be 
worse than it was already in a world that didn’t 
seem to have any other wrens in it. We put 
Mabel’s hair with the other things for building 
a nest, and we pointed out to Mabel how nice 
it would be to think of him in May telling his 
mate all about her and explaining how lovely her 
hair was. Mabel didn’t get enthusiastic, though. 
She kept averting her eyes from Kittie in a cold, 
reserved manner. At last she said she wanted 
to take out some of Kittie’s hair without Kittie 
feeling it. But Kittie said, ‘‘No.” It had been 
done once. Why paint the lily? In these 
pleasant and instructive interests we forgot 
all about how tempus fugit until suddenly, 
across the silent fields, came the sound of a 
distant bell. 

At the first note my heart seemed to stop 
155 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


beating. Then, for I am truly a student of life 
and I love to watch the human soul in critical 
moments, I looked at the other girls. Maudie 
Joyce turned white as chalk and hid her face in 
her hands; Mabel Blossom looked like a big 
balloon that has suddenly had a pin stuck in it 
and shriveled up; Kittie James was scared to 
death, and her new manner of self-possession 
had dropped off her like a Minim’s coat at a 
party. Mabel Muriel Murphy had fallen on 
her knees and was praying. Too well did she 
know what Sister Edna would think of her! 
It was my voice that broke the awful silence. 

“It’s eleven o’clock,” I said, with terrifying 
distinctness. “We’ve been here, out of hounds, 
two hours! What shall we do?” 

For a long and awful minute no one answered. 
But Mabel Blossom was beginning to look nat- 
ural again and finally she spoke. She said 
there was no sense in going back then, but if 
we waited till twelve o’clock and then got back 
and went in to dinner with the rest of the girls 
perhaps the nuns wouldn’t notice us, because 
every Sister might think we had spent the morn- 
ing in the other Sisters’ classes. 

It was a meager hope, but it was the only one 
we had and we had to use it. Besides, it gave 
us another hour out in the fields. Every 
156 


one 


THE CALL OF SPRING 


cheered up right ofF and Mabel Muriel stopped 
praying. We couldn’t stay where we were for 
fear some of the nuns would come to the shrine 
and see us in the distance, so of course the only 
thing to do was to go on. We went, but before 
we started I cut a forked switch off the hazel 
bushes to use as a divining-rod and locate hid- 
den springs. Mabel Blossom said she didn’t 
want to locate any more; she was standing in 
one now. But the others thought it would be 
interesting, so I went first, holding the forked 
switch lightly so it could point downward as 
soon as we came to a hidden spring or gold or 
jewels; and the other girls followed. 

We had all been cheerful enough when we 
started out, but now, strange as it may seem, 
we felt even more cheerful. My father is a 
general, and once I heard him tell my mother 
and brother Jack exactly how he felt the first 
time he ‘‘went into action” during a battle. 
He was only a young lieutenant then and he 
said he felt kind of limp at first and as if he 
hadn’t any legs or arms, and he kept wanting 
to duck his head and get behind things. But 
pretty soon the bullets began to whistle by, and 
the cannon began to roar, and something woke 
up in him and roared too — something wild and 
savage that made him feel as strong as ten men, 

157 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


I didn’t feel exactly wild and savage now, but 
I felt like a violin all tuned up — every string 
stretched tight, you know — and I wanted to 
sing and shout. Maudie Joyce felt the same. 
She told me so afterward. So did the other girls, 
all but Mabel Blossom, who was strangely silent 
and out of tune with dear Nature. But it 
wasn’t remorse with Mabel, or conscience, 
either. How terrible a thing it is in life that 
ofttimes when you know, alas! that you are 
doing wrong, you feel so happy over it. Some 
day I will find out why and write a story about 
it. I would ask Sister Irmingarde now, but 
what does she know of Temptation — the poor 
darling! 

The sun came out and winked at us again and 
then decided to stay where he could watch us. 
So he hung over us, nearly in the middle of the 
heavens, and they kept getting more blue, and 
the snow patches melted faster than ever and 
baby ponds lay where they had been, and there 
were lovely soft colors all around us. The 
maple branches were just taking on the pinkish 
shade that comes first on the twigs and the buds, 
and we could see places where the red squirrels 
had been tapping the branches for the young 
sap. The bluebirds were singing their lovely 
song and sometimes we heard the notes of the 
158 



I SAT DOWN ON THE EDGE OF THE BROOK 







THE CALL OF SPRING 


blackbird. Once we caught a glimpse of a wood- 
chuck just poking his little head out of his hole 
for a sleepy look at the world. He vanished when 
he saw us, as if he felt ashamed of being out so 
soon, but he needn’t have been; we were out, 
too. On all sides we found pussy-willows and 
gathered them; they were pink now, but we knew 
they’d be a fuzzy gray a little later; and we 
pulled branches of the alders and birches and 
willows and opened the buds to see the insides, 
and we ate yards and yards of the bark of the 
black-birch twigs. You know how good they 
taste in the spring — so spicy and aromatic. 

At last we came to a darling brook hiding 
among a lot of willows. I knew it well, for I 
had spent whole mornings by it with our nature 
class; but I had never before come to it in March 
when the snow and ice were just olF it and all 
the little things in it were beginning to feel alive 
again. I simply couldn’t get past that brook. 
I wanted to see the gnats and water-bugs and 
spiders and frogs and beetles and tadpoles and 
what they were doing. So I pushed through the 
willows and sat down on the edge of the brook 
and began to look; and Kittie James sat down, 
too, and crooned over a young tadpole she dis- 
covered the very first thing. The other girls 
waited for us a while, first on one foot and then 

159 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


on the other; they thought it was too wet to sit 
down. But when they saw that Kittie and I 
were getting more excited every minute they sat 
down, too, as they should have done in the first 
place. Maudie and Mabel Blossom were more 
interested in the birds than in the brook. Mabel 
pointed out a hawk that was hovering over us, 
ready to snatch tadpoles, and the way Kittie 
clasped two tadpoles to her breast and saved 
them was beautiful to see. They were dead 
when she got through, but Pm sure they would 
rather have died that way from kindness than be 
eaten by a horrid hungry hawk, and I told Kittie 
so when Mabel Blossom laughed. Mabel was 
a great deal more gay after that happened. It 
took her mind off her hair. 

If the gentle reader has never sat beside a 
meadow brook in March and studied its wonders, 
I advise her to go right out next March and do 
it. We saw the most interesting things! A love 
for water-bugs grew up in me that day that has 
never perished since. For a long time I kept 
them in bottles in my roorrt and studied them 
with scientific interest. While we were watch- 
ing beetles and water-bugs being born and living 
and caring for their young and dying, I felt as 
if we were in some new little world where years 
and years passed in one of our minutes. Per- 
i6o 


THE CALL OF SPRING 


haps we were. All the time the frogs were talk- 
ing in harsh, deep frog talk, and the tree toads 
were singing a shrill chorus, and the little brook 
was chuckling like a baby with a bottle, and a 
fat robin in a maple near us was singing hard 
enough to burst his throat. The girls were too 
interested to talk much, and I was glad. It was 
dreadful to have Nature’s beautiful music in- 
terrupted by girlish voices when the girlish voices 
were not really saying anything. 

Suddenly Mabel Muriel Murphy did say some- 
thing, and it made us jump. We had heard the 
lid of her watch click, but I had just found a 
new kind of insect deep in the mud, and Mabel 
Blossom was wringing out her stockings (she 
had put her feet into the brook in her zeal; but 
it didn’t matter much, they were so wet, anyway) 
and Kittle James had found a whole family of 
frogs, and Maudie was watching a thin, hungry- 
looking little rabbit that was scurrying past us, 
so no one paid any attention to Mabel Muriel 
at first. But when she said in icy tones, ‘Tt’s 
half past two,” I tell you we sat up. Then 
with one accord we all turned terrible, accusing 
eyes on Mabel Blossom. She had got us into 
this. How was she going to get us out of it? 
But all Mabel Blossom could think about was 
her feet and her wet shoes and stockings. As 

i6i 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


usual, I was expected to do the thinking. I tried 
to, but I couldn’t. I wrapped my very nicest 
beetles in my handkerchief and got up and told 
my dear companions there was a farm just over 
the hill where we could go and get some bread 
and milk. Then, I said, we could talk over the 
terrible position in which we were placed and 
decide what to do next. 

Young as I am, I have often observed that in 
what real writers call ‘‘great extremities” my 
dear companions turn to me. They turned now, 
and it was beautiful to see Kittie James’s sweet 
face light up at the thought of food. She left 
her tadpoles without a pang and followed whither 
I led. Mabel Blossom had put on her shoes and 
stockings again and they were so wet that when 
she walked you could hear the water squash out 
of them. So Mabel was strangely silent. We 
all were. All our feet were wet. So were our 
skirts. We were beyond the sound of convent 
bells by this time, but our consciences gnawed 
like the wolf in the Spartan boy’s bosom, or, 
if it was not conscience, it was hunger. 

Mrs. Dunn, the farmer’s wife, looked very 
much surprised to see us, for none of St. Catha- 
rine’s girls had ever called on her before in March. 
She asked lots of questions, which we answered in 
a manner “courteous but reserved,” such as Sister 
162 


THE CALL OF SPRING 

Irmingarde says one isjustified in showing when 
answering prying questions. Mrs. Dunn had 
a little bit of a farm and she said she couldn’t 
give us anything but bread and milk, but she 
gave every girl a bowl of that and wouldn’t 
take any money for it, though we had plenty. 
Mabel Muriel had a five-dollar bill in her pocket- 
book and she wanted Mrs. Dunn to ‘‘accept it,” 
she said. Mrs. Dunn wouldn’t, though her eyes 
looked longing. I suppose she thought perhaps 
it was Mabel Muriel’s sole support and Mabel 
Muriel didn’t explain that her father was a 
millionaire the way she used to do. Sister 
Edna has taught her better. 

Mrs. Dunn had a nice baby two years old 
and, of course, we stayed and played with him 
awhile. Our consciences weren’t gnawing as 
hard now. We felt quite cheerful again; and 
there’s something about a baby, a little pink 
one, that holds the fascinated gaze. Before 
we went away Mabel Muriel pinned the five- 
dollar bill to the baby’s dress with her prettiest 
gold collar-pin, for of course his mother couldn’t 
refuse a present to him. Then we left without 
saying anything about it, leaving her to make the 
joyful discovery. Mabel Muriel does beautiful 
things like that, but I know lots of heavenly 
ways of spending money that she has never 
163 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


even thought of. They are useless to me, alas! 
I have so little money to spend. 

When we got outside we had our Thrilling 
Adventure. Yes, there is one in this story and 
I hope the gentle reader will notice the art I 
show in telling it. First a setting of beautiful 
Nature, then sudden, swift Drama. Fm not 
afraid to write anything now. 

Mrs. Dunn’s cottage was four miles from the 
convent. We didn’t leave it until almost five, 
so before we had gone a mile the shadows began 
to fall. They were lovely on the sides of the 
hills, and we all talked about them and about 
the shadows that fall into every life and what 
our shadows would be. After that Maudie 
Joyce talked about the soul awhile and I got 
out my divining-rod and began to look in earnest 
for bubbling, hidden springs, for we hadn’t 
found any yet. Kittie James thought maybe 
the divining-rod had brought the water I was 
standing in, but Mabel Muriel said no. She 
wasn’t an3rwhere near the divining-rod, yet the 
water was over her shoe-tops, too. 

Finally we came to some woods — the woods 
that had my favorite birches in it. We had 
walked around them when we came, to save 
time, but I thought it would be dreadful to go 
back without seeing those birches, so we started 
164 


THE CALL OF SPRING 


through. It was pretty gloomy, but nobody 
minded that. When we were almost half- 
way through the woods, I stopped to point out 
the place where a hermit thrush lived in the sum- 
mer and where Maudie Joyce and I and two of 
the graduating class had come several after- 
noons last year to hear him. Of course we knew 
he wasn’t there now, but while we were looking 
the bushes began to move. Then a man stepped 
out into the open space in front of us. 

He was young and he had no hat. His clothes 
were torn and his face was scratched and he 
looked sick and dreadful. For an instant he 
stood staring at us, turning his eyes from one to 
the other, and we all stared back. At last he 
spoke to me, and after that he hardly looked at 
the rest, but only at me. 

“Say, miss,” he said, “I’m starving. Have 
you got anything a poor dev — a poor man can 
eat.?” 

We all looked at Kittie James. I don’t think 
any of us felt exactly frightened. I know I 
didn’t. We just wanted to give him something 
quick and Kittie usually has things. This 
time she had fed them to the wren, but we 
suspected she had tucked something away at 
Mrs. Dunn’s. Sure enough she had. We know 
our dear companion pretty well. Kittie put 
165 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


her hand into her pocket and pulled out two 
little slices of bread stuck together with butter 
between them. The man looked at them. 

“Godr he said. 

Then quicker than I can tell about it he had 
snatched that bread from her hand and it had 
gone down his throat. I never saw anything 
like it. He gulped it in one mouthful, as a dog 
would do it, or a wolf, and glared at me with a 
kind of wild look, angry and desperate. 

‘‘God!’’ he said again. “Is that all? Ain’t 
you got anything more? I ain’t had a mouth- 
ful for three days. I tell you I’m starving!” 

We looked through our pockets and shook our 
heads, and he turned and threw himself on the 
ground, with his arms out and his face on them, 
and groaned. 

“I’ll have to give up,” he said. “I’ll have to 
let ’em take me.” 

He kept saying that over and over in broken, 
gulping words as if he were crying; but of course 
we knew he wasn’t crying, for he was a man. 
At last I spoke up. I felt responsible, for when- 
ever he had spoken it was to me, as if he knew me; 
so I told him there was a farm very near where he 
could go and get something to eat. The man 
looked up for a minute and shook his head. 

“Not much,” he said. “I’m too near that 

i66 


THE CALL OF SPRING 


farm now. Fm only waitin’ for darkness to 
make a getaway out of this infernal open coun- 
try.” 

We didn’t know exactly what he meant, but 
it was plain enough that he wouldn’t go to the 
farm and ask for food. Perhaps he was too 
proud. He didn’t look proud, but you can 
never tell. I don’t suppose Robert Bruce 
looked proud, or Prince Charlie, or King Alfred, 
the times they took refuge in shepherds’ huts, 
and places like that. I had my divining-rod 
in my hand and in my excitement I was pointing 
it straight at him. He wasn’t a hidden spring, 
but he might have been ’most anything else. 
I wondered what he was. While he was think- 
ing about it he noticed the rod. 

‘‘What are you pointing that stick at me 
for?” he said. “You ain’t afraid of me, are 
you? I won’t do you no harm.” And he 
added, with a queer kind of a laugh, “I’ve done 
all the harm I’m goin’ to do.” 

I told him we were not afraid of him and I 
added that I was going to the farm to get him 
something to eat. 

“We’ll all go,” Maudie said right off. 

“For God’s sake get enoughy^ was all the man 
said. 

When we reached Mrs. Dunn’s house she was 

-12 167 


M.AY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


crying with joy over the money she had found 
pinned to the baby. She wiped her eyes when 
she saw us and asked if we had come back for 
it. She said she had kind of thought maybe we 
would. Mabel Muriel hurried to explain that 
we had not done such a dreadful thing, but that 
we wanted something more to eat. When she 
heard that Mrs. Dunn bustled about in a lovely, 
busy way. 

‘‘Of course, of course,” she said. “You 
didn’t have enough. ’Twas reproachin’ myself 
I was after you’d gone.” 

She brought out a big loaf of bread and began 
to cut slices off it because she thought we would 
eat them right there. But I said, firmly, that 
we would take the whole loaf away with us, 
and an old knife to cut it, and a big piece of 
butter, and a pitcher of milk, and some meat if 
she had any. Mrs. Dunn looked very much 
surprised indeed and threw up her hands and 
rolled her eyes; but at last she brought it all 
out for us — the knife, too, and a slice of ham. 
She wrapped everything up in a newspaper but 
the pitcher of milk. I carried that. 

When we got into the woods again we found 
the man lying on the ground just where we had 
left him. I don’t think he expected us to come 
back. His face, when he saw us, looked like a 
1 68 


THE CALL OF SPRING 


light lit suddenly in a dark room. He got up 
very slowly, as if it was hard for him to move, 
and we handed him the things. 

‘Tt’s bread and butter and milk and ham,” 
I said to him. ‘‘Ham isn’t very digestible^ but 
I guess it’s nourishing. I wish we had more.” 

He laughed a little with his mouth full. He 
had begun to tear at the meat and bread. 

“It’s the saving of me,” he said. And then 
without any warning he dropped on his knees 
before me and kissed my dress. 

“I’ll be grateful to you as long as I live,” 
he said. “Now run home where you be- 
long.” 

We didn’t think that was very polite, so we 
bade him a distant good-night and started. 
Before we had gone more than a few steps he 
stopped us. 

“Will you promise me not to tell any one 
to-night that you saw me?” he asked: and his 
eyes looked wild again. Of course we promised. 
Then he got up and began to eat again as if 
we weren’t there and, with lingering looks be- 
hind, we left him. 

When we got near the convent lights were 
flashing in all the buildings and we could see 
signs of excitement everywhere. Before we 
had climbed over the stone wall near St. Agatha’s 
169 , 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


shrine one of the gardeners came running toward 
us, yelling backward as he came. 

‘‘Here they are!” he said. “Here they are! 
Praise be!” Then shadowy figures came from 
all directions, for it was dark by that time, and 
Sisters and girls crowded around us, and we were 
escorted to the main building by a kind of torch- 
light procession. Sister Irmingarde and Mother 
Ernesta met us in the hall. They looked worried 
to death, but strange to say their faces did not 
light up with love and joy when they saw us. 
Only the anxiety fell off them and something 
else, terribly stern and grave, took its place. 
I knew then that we had done wrong, and, 
though usually my intuition is deeper than the 
intuition of the other girls, this time I think they 
knew it, too. 

We had baths, and food, and rubbings, and 
hot lemonade first. Then we had words of 
scathing reproach. But before this, little by 
little, we learned of the terrible anxiety our 
absence had caused and of how the whole con- 
vent force had been searching for us all day long. 
They hadn’t found us because we were hidden 
by the willows around the brook part of the 
time, and at Mrs. Dunn’s in the afternoon, and 
nobody dreamed we would go to either place. 
They were looking for us in town and in houses 
170 


THE CALL OF SPRING 


nearer the convent. They would have been 
worried any day to have us gone, but to-day it 
was worse than any other time, and this was why. 
The gentle reader should take a long breath 
here. We did. 

That morning before we were missed the chief 
of police in the town nearest to our convent 
had telephoned to the Sisters. He warned them 
that a desperate character had escaped from jail 
three days before and had been seen since, by a 
farmer, hiding near St. Catharine’s. 

“Keep your girls very close,” the chief had 
said. “Don’t let them out of sight of the build- 
ings. He’s as bad as they make them.” 

When Mabel Blossom and I heard this we 
just gazed into each other’s eyes with long, 
meaning looks. But before we had time to 
mention that we thought it was like Prince 
Charlie or King Alfred and the goat-herd, Maudie 
Joyce came running toward us with a big en- 
cyclopedia in her hand. 

“May Iverson,” she said, in trembling tones, 
“do you remember how, while that man was 
talking, your divining-rod kept pointing at him 
until he spoke of it?” 

I remembered. 

“Then look at this,” said Maudie Joyce, the 
way Salome must have asked the king to look 
171 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


at John the Baptist’s head. There was a dread- 
ful horror in her tone. She was holding out the 
encyclopedia with one page open at the word 
‘‘witch-hazel.” This sentence met our un- 
believing eyes: 

“In the seventeenth century it was believed 
that the witch-hazel divining-rod, guided by 
pixies, was instrumental in the pursuit and 
capture of criminals, 

I fell into a chair. So did Mabel Blossom. 
Maudie stood over us nodding her head. 

“We were only instruments,” she said, solemn- 
ly, “in the hands of Fate. The divining-rod 
drew us.” 

It would have been nice if we could have told 
Sister Irmingarde this, for it would have shown 
her that we were not to blame. But we couldn’t 
say a word about it that night, of course, because 
we had promised the criminal we wouldn’t. So 
after supper Sister Irmingarde talked and talked 
to us. When she had said all the things we knew 
she’d say, and a great many others we hadn’t 
thought of, she paused and clasped her brow 
wearily with her white hands and let herself 
droop forward in her chair and sat staring down 
at her desk as if she didn’t see it. I never saw 
her look so discouraged. 

“But what’s the use of talking to you?” she 
172 


THE CALL OF SPRING 


said, in a despairing tone. “I used to hope you 
were merely thoughtless. Now — sometimes Fm 
afraid it’s actual indifference in every one of you, 
closing your ears to the voice of authority.” 

But it wasn’t that. It was several other 
things. First it was the wren. Then it was the 
divining-rod guided by the pixies. Last, but 
most of all, I guess it was the youth in every one 
of us, opening our ears to the voice of spring. 


VIII 


INTRODUCE MOTION STUDY 

T is indeed hard to begin this chapter 
— there are so many important things 
that ought to be said in the first 
paragraph. Perhaps the most im- 
portant of all is this, so I will say it 
at once and let the rest wait. 

No one can appreciate this experience unless 
she has tried to do good and failed. If she has, 
and if she remembers exactly how she felt when 
failure fell, and if she has read the lives of Cleo- 
patra and Bryan and Napoleon, she may read 
on. 

It began thus: I was sitting at my desk in the 
study-hall one evening last week, wondering 
whether I should read Newcomb’s Principles 
of Political Economy or Madame Blavatsky’s 
Isis Unveiled. I had learned my lessons, and I 
had half an hour left, which was enough to learn 
all about either political economy or theosophy. 
But I was ’most sure it wasn’t enough time to 

174 



I INTRODUCE MOTION STUDY 


learn all about them both; so I sat for a minute 
fingering the two books and wondering which 
I would tear the literary heart out of, as another 
author beautifully expresses it. 

Sister Irmingarde was at her desk at the head 
of the study-hall, sitting with her eyes on a book 
that lay open before her. When she is reading 
one cannot see her eyes at all — only eyelids that 
seem closed, and long, black -eyelashes^ resting 
on her cheeks. This night, as I looked at her, 
her face seemed to me like a beautiful home that 
some one had locked up and left, with the shut- 
ters closed and all the blinds drawn down. 
While I was thinking this, and wondering wheth- 
er the other girls were clever enough to think of 
it, and reaching for my note-book so I could 
preserve it, the study-hall, which had been cool 
and gray and ordinary, suddenly became bright 
and warm and cheerful. A kind of ripple passed 
over the girls, like a breeze touching a field of 
grain, and they all seemed to sway forward a 
little, as if they were pulled by invisible strings. 
Full well did I know what these things meant. 
Sister Irmingarde had raised her eyes from her 
book and was smiling. 

I love to see her do that. It is almost the only 
thing that diverts my mind when I am think- 
ing of my art. I happened to catch her eye, so 

175 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


I smiled back, of course, with all my heart, and 
she made a little gesture which meant that I was 
to come to her desk. I was there almost before 
she had finished the gesture, and she closed the 
book she had been reading and offered it to me. 

‘‘Here is a book that should interest you. 
May,’’ she said. “Look it over when you have 
time and tell me what you think of it.” Then, 
as she was handing it to me, she opened it again 
and showed me a paragraph she had marked in 
the second chapter, and told me to read that first 
because it would give me the thing in a nutshell. 
I thanked her and took the book back to my 
desk. There were twenty-five minutes left of 
the study-hour, so I slid Newcomb and Blavatsky 
out of the way and began the new book without 
losing a second. It is always thrilling to read 
anything Sister Irmingarde recommends, even 
when the book is instructive; and I’d rather talk 
about books with her than go to three matinees. 

I started at the place she had marked, and I 
will admit to the gentle reader that as I read the 
icy chill of disappointment touched my soul. 
Whatl wanted to read about was Life, and this 
book was about motions — not emotions, you 
know; just plain motions. 

The writer said motions were important 
indeed, and that everybody wasted a great many 
176 


I INTRODUCE MOTION STUDY 


of them, and that the world would be a changed 
and wonderful place if people would be more 
careful about them. In the paragraph Sister 
Irmingarde had marked he told about a girl 
who made boxes in a factory. She was very 
quick, and she made more boxes in five minutes 
than any other girl in any factory anywhere. 
She was so wonderful that people came to the 
box factory to see her work; and she won prizes 
and held the box-making record of the world, 
and all her dear companions were jealous of her. 
The man who wrote the book said he heard about 
how fast she worked, so he got permission to 
visit the factory and watch her — for he was 
almost sure that she wasted motions. 

The gentle reader will admit that this was not 
exciting. But it became more interesting when 
the man got to the factory and sat down to watch 
the girl make boxes. He did not fall in love with 
her. I hasten to explain this at once, lest the 
gentle reader expect him to, and be disappointed, 
as I was. No. He just watched her make 
boxes; and he discovered that his terrible, in- 
nermost suspicions were correct. She wasted 
motions. Even this wonderful girl wasted them. 
I don’t remember exactly what the figures were, 
but I think she wasted twenty-eight motions 
every time she made a box. She made thirty- 
177 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


five boxes every five minutes, so you can see for 
yourself that the poor girl wasted nine hundred 
and eighty motions every five minutes, instead 
of saving them all and using them to make 
seventy-two boxes in five minutes, as she could 
have done if she had been really clever and care- 
ful about her motions. 

When the man told this to the girl she was 
annoyed and spoke rudely to him; for she had 
been greatly praised in the past, as I said before. 
But he pointed out how much she could earn 
by making seventy-two boxes instead of thirty- 
five, and he showed her how to do it and to 
save her motions instead of throwing them care- 
lessly around the factory, as it were. (I put 
in that ‘‘as it were” without thinking, and now 
I know that when I did it I wasted eighteen 
motions, for the words were not necessary. 
Motion study makes life seem terribly serious.) 

We will now return to the girl making the 
boxes. In half an hour after the man met her 
she was making seventy-two boxes every five 
minutes, with tears of joy on her pale cheeks. 

After telling about this unusual and interest- 
ing girl, the author went on to show how we all 
waste time and money by wasting our motions, 
and his book told how “fatigue-eliminating de- 
vices” would help every one to work “with the 
178 


I INTRODUCE MOTION STUDY 


reliability of a steam-valve, the joy of a hunting- 
dog, and the inspiration of an artist.” All we 
have to do in manual work, he said, is to shorten 
the distance the right hand has to move, and have 
the left hand in position to begin the next mo- 
tion right off, and remember our ‘‘variables,” 
and consider separately every element that af- 
fects the amount of work we are able to turn out. 
He said in writing, for instance, we ought to 
save at least one motion on every letter of the 
alphabet, and shorten the distance the hand 
has to travel, besides. 

That’s all I read then. My brain felt tired 
and not very clear when I got through. I put 
my hand up to my brow to see if it was really 
as hot as it felt, and I remembered that I was 
wasting a motion, so I took it down in a hurry 
and wasted another. But of course I couldn’t 
leave it there. Then I looked around at my 
dear companions, to divert my mind. 

Kittie James sat just across from me, sharpen- 
ing a pencil and wasting so many motions that 
it made me feel sick to watch her. ’Most every 
time she shaved off a piece of wood she laid 
down the knife and looked at the pencil and 
picked up the shaving and threw it in the waste- 
paper basket, instead of waiting to throw them 
all in at once. It was a dreadful sight, after what 
179 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


I had been reading. I turned a hopeful gaze on 
Mabel Blossom. She was tearing a paper into 
little bits and dropping half of them on her desk 
and getting them mixed up with her notes, and, 
naturally, having to pick them all up again. 
Maudie Joyce was copying something from a 
book she was reading, and wasting at least one 
hundred motions over every paragraph. I looked 
around the room. Every blessed girl there was 
wasting motions just as fast as she could waste 
them, and as I gazed I saw my duty. I realized 
that what this noble man was doing out in the 
world I could do in our quiet convent halls. I 
could ‘‘stop the waste” and develop “increased 
efficiency,” as he called it. I thought it over 
quickly, and my brain throbbed like an engine. 
I decided that first of all I would teach myself, 
and next I would teach the girls. 

I wanted to begin that very minute, so I sat 
for a long time studying the things on my desk 
and planning how I could get them all into the 
big drawer below it with one motion. It was 
hard, for there were lots of things there. At 
last I tried to do it with a noble sweep of the 
arm, but I didn’t get it just right; so the things 
all fell oflT the desk, and the ink spilled, and the 
pens and pencils rolled over the floor and got 
under the girls’ feet, and I had to get down on 
i8o 


I INTRODUCE MOTION STUDY 


my hands and knees and grovel around for them 
for five minutes. Sister Irmingarde looked 
dreadfully surprised and all the girls giggled. 
But I didn’t mind very much. I had begun my 
new work; and, anyway, I saved one motion 
by not returning Mabel Blossom’s nod when we 
separated in the hall. Mabel had giggled harder 
than any one else over the things I spilled. 

The next morning I started St. Catharine’s 
Motion Study Club, and made myself the presi- 
dent. All the girls joined right off. Most of 
them seemed to think it was going to be like mov- 
ing pictures, but they realized their sad error 
before I got through with them. We went to 
work in a scientific way, as the man advised in 
the book. The first thing to do was to study the 
girls carefully and make notes of their motions, 
and show them how they could improve. I in- 
terested Kittie James immediately by telling 
her how many motions she wasted at the table. 
Kittie loves to eat, so I explained to her how much 
more she could eat if she saved her motions. 
We have only half an hour for meals, and Kittie 
saw the point at once; but she was not clever 
enough to apply it the way she should have done. 
Her idea was to save her own motions by making 
the other girls wait on her. I pointed out this 
error, and Janet Trelawney helped me by making 

i8i 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


some sketches showing Kittie saving motions at 
the table. Kittie looked at the pictures and 
resigned from the club, but I got her back again 
the next night by giving a spread for her in my 
room. ^ 

• Janet’s pictures gave me a very good idea. 
She had a camera, and I persuaded her to take 
snap-shots of all the girls when they didn’t know 
it but were wasting motions. These gave us 
what real writers call “powerful weapons.” 
After we made a careful study of every girl, 
and wrote out a list of things she had to do 
regularly, we “enumerated all the motions re- 
quired in that effort,” as the author of the book 
advised, and we showed the girls that they were 
throwing away thousands of . motions every 
day. 

It was simply fascinating after that to see how 
things worked out. Of course ’most every girl 
started wrong. Janet Trelawney, who plays 
the piano beautifully, decided that she could 
eliminate a lot of motions by not practising any 
more, and Sister Cecilia had a dreadful time with 
Janet until I heard about it and pointed out her 
mistakes to the poor misguided child. I showed 
Janet how she could save motions by not glanc- 
ing at the clock during practice hour and by 
not getting up and looking into the garden, 
182 


I INTRODUCE MOTION STUDY 


until she got through. Sister Cecilia was real- 
ly enthusiastic when I showed her and Janet 
how many motions Janet could save by mem- 
orizing all her music and not having to turn 
the sheets. There were over three hundred 
motions saved every hour, but Janet was cold 
and unresponsive when I discovered this. ^ 
I turned my attention to Adeline Thurston 
next, and my heart leaped with joy over the dear 
girl’s delight when I showed her how many 
motions she could save in writing. Adeline 
writes poetry, and I proved that by making 
her letters smaller she could write ever so 
many more poems without tiring her hand. 
Adeline was so grateful she almost cried, for she 
is a frail child and has to save her strength. She 
tried my plan right off and it worked beautifully, 
except that the next time she composed a poem 
she made the letters so small she couldn’t read 
them afterward, so her beautiful poem was lost 
to the world. Adeline resigned from the club 
that very day, and I had to give her my new belt- 
buckle to get her back. We had to have her, 
for she is always the secretary of every club and 
writes the most beautiful minutes. She wouldn’t 
save any motions on her poetry after her sad 
experience, but she saved thousands on the re- 
ports of the Motion Study Club. She couldn’t 
13 183 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


read them, and nobody else could, either; but 
nobody dared to complain. 

The most interest ng experiment of all was 
with Mabel Muriel Murphy. Long ere this 
I have told the gentle reader how messy Mabel 
Muriel used to be about her clothes, and how, 
with Sister Edna’s help, she reformed and be- 
came the neatest girl at St. Catharine’s. Since 
then it has always taken Mabel one full hour 
to dress or undress. As we are only allowed 
half an hour, Mabel Muriel had to get up thirty 
minutes earlier than the rest of us every morning, 
and go to her room half an hour earlier every 
night. Thus she missed many pleasant and in- 
structive occasions, including “spreads.” Mabel 
Muriel told me with her own lips that this was 
often irksome, and when I told her I thought by 
saving motions she could dress and undress in 
thirty minutes her face lit up with joy. 

The first morning I stole into her room and 
tried to show her how to save motions, we were 
both an hour late. You see, we made the mo- 
tions fewer, but as we had to study each motion 
a long time before we made it, it wasn’t really 
much saving. Mabel Muriel was interested, 
though, and bound to keep at it; so the second 
morning, when she dressed without my help 
and tried to apply our principles, she was an hour 
184 


I INTRODUCE MOTION STUDY 


and a half late, and Sister Edna called her aside 
and uttered stern reproaches. The third morn- 
ing Mabel Muriel came into the class-room on 
time, but her hair was over her left ear, and three 
buttons on the back of her blouse were un- 
buttoned, and her placket was open. Sister 
Edna had to talk to her again, and her experi- 
ment could not yet be called a success. 

We then watched with fascinated interest a 
grim contest between science and affection. 
Mabel Muriel was dreadfully anxious to learn to 
dress in thirty minutes, and just as anxious to 
please Sister Edna, who is her Ideal, by looking 
neat. So sometimes she would be neat and late 
and sometimes messy and on time, but never 
neat and early, as she was wont to be ere she 
took up motion study. It was a terrible thing 
to watch, for when Mabel Muriel Murphy sets 
her jaw and goes at anything she keeps at it 
with awful determination. I tried to stop her, 
for I felt responsible; but as another Literary 
Artist says, “I had put in motion forces I could 
not control.” All I could do was to stealthily 
button Mabel Muriel up the back whenever 
I got a chance in a class-room. 

Was I, all this time, the gentle reader asks, 
neglecting my dear friends Maudie Joyce and 
Mabel Blossom? Nay. But the things that 

185 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


happened to them are almost too sad to 
describe. I fain would pass them o’er, but that 
would not be Art. The true Literary Artist 
writes of Life as it is, even when he has to plunge 
his pen into the quivering human heart to do it 
and write his words with Blood. Therefore, 
I continue. 

In the beginning Mabel and Maudie were not 
very enthusiastic over the Motion Study Club. 
They said they thought motion study was silly. 
But after I had talked to them, and Janet had 
made a lot of snap-shots when they didn’t know 
it, and I had read some of the man’s book to 
them and told them all about the girl in the 
box factory, they began to understand. Mabel 
Blossom still has a way of pulling at her lips and 
pinching her eyebrows and rubbing her forehead 
when she is studying, and I added these motions 
up, “estimated their force,” as the man said 
we must do, and showed Mabel that in the next 
year she would have wasted billions of motions, 
not to speak of pulling her face out of shape. I 
showed, too, that her eyebrows would be gone 
in about eight years more, and that her mouth 
would be pulled half-way to her left ear in two 
years and seven months. You’d better believe 
that interested — ^yea, staggered — Mabel Blossom. 
I also reminded her of the beautiful theory that 

i86 


I INTRODUCE MOTION STUDY 


no lady lifts her hands to her face or head after 
she is dressed unless she has to use her hand- 
kerchief. At St. Catharine’s we are not supposed 
to do a single thing to our features after the 
dressing-hour, except to make them reflect what 
Sister Edna calls ‘‘a quick and eager intelligence.” 

The very morning I talked to her Mabel 
stopped pulling her mouth, and I pointed out 
to her at noon that she had saved seventy-three 
motions. The same morning Maudie had saved 
one hundred and seventeen motions by not 
dusting and arranging her desk as usual, but I 
was not so much gratified with this result. It 
“left much to be desired,” as Sister Irmingarde 
says about our recitations. 

That night we talked about “motion study” 
and “increased efficiency” until the Great 
Silence fell, and the more we talked the more 
enthusiastic Mabel and Maudie got. After this 
they were the most zealous members of the club, 
and though I was giving most of my time to 
it now, and holding meetings every day, Mabel 
and Maudie did even more than I did, because 
there were two of them. They did not exactly 
work with the reliability of a steam-valve, but 
all the other girls admitted that they certainly 
showed the joy of a hunting-dog in chasing their 
dear companions and making them do things. 

187 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


They wrote down every girl’s name in a spe- 
cial book they had, and they took all her meas- 
urements, because the author of the book said 
it was necessary to consider the anatomy of 
workers. Then they carried the girl off to 
distant corners in the convent grounds and talked 
to her long and earnestly. Sometimes the girl 
was grateful and sometimes she wasn’t; but, 
whether she was or not, Mabel and Maudie 
clung to her and drilled her in motion study, at 
first alone and then with other girls. Wherever 
I looked I could see silent groups of girls making 
strange, mysterious motions under the trees and 
along the river-bank, or standing petrified in one 
spot, because they had made a wrong motion 
and didn’t dare to move for fear of making an- 
other. Maudie and Mabel went about looking 
so busy it seemed almost wicked to speak to 
them. They had a plan of their own and were 
working it up in secret. Little did I wot, alas! 
what it would prove to be. 

All this time I was so busy myself I didn’t 
have a minute to study my lessons. Usually 
I can get them by reading them over once, but 
now I didn’t even have time to do that. There 
was always some girl standing around waiting 
to tell me how she had cut down her motions 
from six thousand seven hundred and eight 
i88 


I INTRODUCE MOTION STUDY 


every day to five hundred and twenty-two, and 
asking how she could do even better; and it 
was simply wonderful to watch her go through 
the few motions that were left and then tell her 
how many she could drop. I got eight girls 
down to sixty-nine a day, but they weren’t really 
graceful over them. And when Sister Edna 
called them before her and asked if it was in- 
dolence or paralysis that ailed them, they all 
cried and blamed me. 

It was a whole week before I noticed how dif- 
ferent things seemed at St. Catharine’s. I had 
been so busy I hadn’t really paid much attention 
to the girls when we were together; I was more 
interested in working with them alone or in 
little groups. But finally I noticed that they 
didn’t seem exactly natural. They stopped 
waving their hands to one another when they 
met on the campus, and they did their studying 
standing up to save the motion of sitting down, 
and Mabel Blossom went about with a fixed look 
of awful anxiety on her face because she was 
afraid she would waste a movement of the lips 
in smiling. The girls spent all their spare time 
telling one another how they saved motions, 
and ever and anon Mabel Blossom and Maudie 
Joyce drilled them in something new. 

This was the way things were when Mother 
189 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


Mary Caroline came to visit St. Catharine’s. 
Mother Mary Caroline is the head of our whole 
convent Order. She spends her time traveling 
from one of her convents to another and giving 
the Sisters and the House Superiors advice. 
She comes to St. Catharine’s about once a year. 
It is always a great occasion, and we have a 
special entertainment for her. She is old — as 
much as fifty, I should think — and thin, and she 
has a face like a white rose that has faded, and 
brown eyes that always look tired. But she 
is very gracious and dignified, and she acts like 
what she is — a Frenchwoman with noble blood 
flowing through her veins. Her nuns are 
devoted to her, and count the months till she 
comes. Every girl at St. Catharine’s is on her 
best behavior when Mother Mary Caroline is 
within the convent walls. I have to explain all 
this so the gentle reader will realize how em- 
barrassing was the thing that happened. 

One Saturday morning while we were entering 
the refectory the word ran along the lines that 
Reverend Mother Mary Caroline had arrived 
the night before, and would see us in the study- 
hall as soon as we had finished breakfast. The 
girls were excited, but Mabel Blossom and 
Maudie Joyce were the worst of all. They 
rushed up and down the lines whispering to their 
190 


I INTRODUCE MOTION STUDY 


friends, which, of course, was against the rules. 
I remember wondering what they were saying 
and wishing they would hurry and tell me; and 
then I noticed that most of the girls looked a 
little scared. I decided I would keep out of 
it, whatever it was, and I pretended I had for- 
gotten something and went to my room. When 
I got back the girls were seated, and talking was 
not allowed after that. I didn’t really think 
much about what they had been whispering, 
for the night before I had thought of a way to 
do my hair with three motions, and I had tried 
it that morning, and I wanted to know how they 
liked it. I was just crazy for a chance to ask 
them, especially as I was afraid the hair would 
fall down before my chance came. 

There wasn’t time to ask more than two or 
three of them, though, for we went straight from 
the refectory to the study-hall, and we are not 
allowed to speak after we have crossed its thresh- 
old. I went to my favorite desk at the back 
of the hall — the last seat of the middle row. I 
like it because when I sit there I can see the whole 
room and what all the girls are doing, and I can 
look, too, at Sister Irmingarde, who is down at 
the front in a direct line from me. That is 
why I saw so plainly the unusual incidents that 
now took place. 


.MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 

The room was strangely quiet. It always is 
quiet, but usually one hears the rustling of pages 
as we turn the leaves of our books, or the shuffling 
of the girls’ feet. But motion study had stopped 
most of that the week before, and now the girls 
hardly seemed to breathe. Sister Irmingarde 
raised her head and looked slowly around the 
room, and as she looked I saw her catch her 
lower lip between her teeth for an instant, the 
way she does when she is puzzled. If she meant 
to speak, she didn’t have time, for the door 
opened suddenly and Mother Mary Caroline 
came in with Mother Emily, the House Superior, 
by her side. Every girl rose to her feet as if 
some one had touched a spring in her. They 
are used to that, and always do it pretty well. 
If we were all in our graves we’d rise from force 
of habit if Mother Mary Caroline entered the 
cemetery. But this morning those eighty girls 
got up like one girl rising. Then, instead of 
settling back comfortably into their seats when 
Mother Emily gave the signal, they sat down 
again with a bang that shook the room. You 
see, they had let themselves drop to save bend- 
ing their knees. After that not one foot slipped ! 
Not one single hand or head moved! They sat 
like eighty stone images, looking straight ahead. 

I was a little behind the rest, for I hadn’t 
192 


THEY LET THEMSELVES DROP TO SAVE BENDING THEIR KNEES 







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I INTRODUCE MOTION STUDY 


known what was coming. But I sat as still as 
they did, for I saw now why Mabel and Maudie 
had been drilling the girls so much. 

Reverend Mother looked surprised, and Sister 
Irmingarde’s eyes narrowed a little and took on 
a queer, watchful expression. Then she struck 
her bell sharply, as a signal that books could be 
opened, for she and Mother Emily and Mother 
Mary Caroline always have a little low-voiced 
chat before they pay much attention to us. 
She had stood up, too, when Reverend Mother 
came in, and had given the visitors chairs. Now, 
as she struck the bell, the right hand of every 
girl went toward her book like a piston-rod 
and drew it toward her, and the left hand went 
forward and opened it; and the head of every 
girl bent at the same angle over the page of every 
book and stayed there. It was done exactly 
as if they were all parts of a big machine, but 
without a sound. 

We stayed that way for five minutes. I don’t 
believe a single girl moved a single muscle, and 
when you remember that there were eighty 
girls and more than four thousand muscles, 
you’d better believe it was a strain to see them 
all, as it were, in disuse. I never felt so odd 
in my life. 

Mother Mary Caroline rose, and again every 

193 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


girl rose with her. There was a swish of skirts 
as they stood, and another bang as they dropped 
when she motioned them to sit. That was all, 
but now every eye was fixed with a glassy stare 
on Mother Caroline’s face. 

I don’t know what she thought of us. She 
didn’t make any sign, except to glance once at 
Sister Irmingarde’s white face and then look 
away. She talked to those eighty graven images 
for a few minutes, the way she always did, and 
when she stopped the eighty girls brought their 
hands together just once — in one great clap. 
I don’t know what kept me from clapping right 
along, as we had always done. I suppose it was 
instinct — or terror; for now Sister Irmingarde 
had started to her feet, and her face was scarlet 
up to the edge of the white band that covered 
her brow. I saw Mother Caroline touch her on 
the arm, and Sister Irmingarde stood still, and 
the flush faded slowly from her face. 

Mother Caroline spoke to us very quietly. 

‘‘Young ladies,” she said, “you may resume 
your work.” 

At that every right hand in the room reached 
out, opened an ink-well, grasped a pen from 
the pen-rack on each desk, and put it into the 
ink. Then every right hand drew back. At the 
same time every left hand pushed a pad of writ- 
194 


I INTRODUCE MOTION STUDY 


ing-paper into position, and every head bent 
above the pad. Next every hand seized a blotter, 
blotted a page, and turned it over, while every 
right hand went on writing. It was a wonder- 
ful, almost a terrible sight. No one can imagine 
how queer it made me feel. I stared until my 
eyes bulged out of my head, and while I was 
staring Sister Irmingarde came quietly down the 
center aisle and stood beside me. 

“May,” she said, in a voice so low I could 
hardly hear her, “what does this mean? Is it 
some of your work?” 

I stood up and tried to speak, but I couldn’t 
tell her exactly why they were doing it, and she 
must have seen by my face that I couldn’t. And 
I didn’t know what to say, for I couldn’t clear 
myself and desert my dear companions if they 
were going to have trouble. She stood looking at 
me for a minute, and her great brown eyes burned 
in her white face like a live coal among ashes. 
(Please notice that about the coal and the ashes, 
and ask yourself if any one else would have 
thought of it at such a moment.) 

Suddenly the girl who sat across the aisle 
from me giggled — a dreadfully frightened giggle 
— and a girl near her giggled, too. 

Sister Irmingarde spoke again then, in a tone 
we had never heard her use before. I will make 

195 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 

another comparison here, as this is a good place. 
Her voice sounded like a convent bell ringing out 
over a frozen lake at five o’clock on a dreadfully 
cold winter morning. 

‘‘Silence!” she said. And there was silence. 
Then she added, “Miss Blossom, possibly you 
can explain this extraordinary performance.” 

Mabel Blossom stood up, pale but calm. 

“Yes, Sister,” she said, in clear, ringing tones, 
“I can. It’s ‘increased efficiency.’ It means 
that we have reduced the motions of our study 
hour from eight hundred and four to seventeen, 
and we wanted to show you and Mother Caroline 
how we do it. We wanted to give you a surprise.” 

Sister Irmingarde looked at her a minute. 
Then she took her handkerchief out of her flowing 
sleeve and wiped her brow. 

“You have done it,” she said, in faint tones. 
“You have certainly done it.” 

She walked back to her desk without another 
word. I looked at Mother Mary Caroline. 
She had turned her back to the room, but I saw 
her shoulders shaking, and a terrible weight was 
lifted from my heart. For the next five minutes 
Mother Caroline, Mother Emily, and Sister 
Irmingarde talked in low tones, and their black- 
veiled heads were very close together. Then 
Mother Caroline and Mother Emily went away. 

196 


I INTRODUCE MOTION STUDY 


After they had gone, Sister Irmingarde sat 
still for a little while, as if she had had a shock 
and wanted time to pull herself together. We 
waited, and I need not tell the gentle reader 
that we suffered — for it was all too plain that 
our “surprise” had not been a success. Then 
Sister Irmingarde began to talk to us. She 
told us we had “come dangerously near creating 
an impression of discourtesy toward Reverend 
Mother,” and she warned us against taking up 
fads and wasting time on experiments we did 
not understand, and, above all, against taking 
any “concerted action” without consulting her. 
She said there had been “a general paralysis 
of effort” in St. Catharine’s during the past 
week, and she ordered us to make up all the 
lessons we had lost. Then she swept the room 
with her beautiful eyes, and smiled her lovely 
smile — the first since that dreadful half-hour 
— and we all straightened up again like thirsty 
plants that have been watered. 

“Oh, my girls, my girls,” she said, “what 
will you do next?” 

Maudie Joyce is sometimes strangely dull. 
She was now. 

“We thought you’d like it. Sister,” she said. 
“Didn’t you, really?'' 

Sister Irmingarde wiped her forehead again, 
197 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


as if even to think of it was too much for 
her. 

Like it!” she said. And she added, “For 
one horrible moment I thought you had all gone 
mad — or that I had!” 

Those words were the death-knell of Motion 
Study at St. Catharine’s. 


IX 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


Mabel Blossom suggested the ex- 

A periment I am about to describe, I 
hasten to give her credit in the first 
sentence of this chapter. Usually 
5 ^" ' X I our class who thinks 

™ of wonderful things and then makes 

her vision clear to others, as it were — but I did 
not think of this one, and you’d better believe 
Fm glad now that I didn’t. It was Mabel. 
We were all very much surprised by Mabel’s 
being able to think of anything important, but 
we learned a great deal from it; and Mabel her- 
self was even more helped than we were by the 
lesson it taught us. 

She experienced many emotions also, which I 
will describe when I get to the right place — 
and / will decide what that place is regardless 
of Mabel, who is sitting beside me poking me 
with her pencil and insisting that the place is 
here and now. Little indeed does poor Mabel 
14 199 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


know about art, or about the slow and reverent 
steps with which the true artist approaches the 
temple. Why, I can’t think of a single famous 
writer who tells her whole story in her very 
first paragraph, where Mabel thinks it should 
be told. This is the proper way to begin, and 
I hope it will be another lesson to her. 

Perhaps the gentle reader has noticed that 
sometimes the most interesting experiences we 
have come to us at our dullest moments — that 
is, they come suddenly, when everything seems 
dull. After that ‘‘life is never the same again,” 
as the poet beautifully expresses it. This is 
what happened when Mabel Blossom started 
the Grouchometer Club. 

We were in the study-hall one evening in 
February — twenty girls of our class — all bent 
over our books and dreadfully bored by them, 
of course, but keeping on because there wasn’t 
anything else to do. Sister Irmingarde was not 
in the room, and that made things even worse. 
When she is with us I can always pass the time 
pleasantly, when my lessons are not interesting, 
by looking at her and wondering why she en- 
tered the convent and what she’s really thinking 
of when she sits with her eyes on her book and 
her thoughts, I wot, a million miles away. We 
know that when she was “out in the world” — 


200 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


that is, before she entered the convent — she be- 
longed to a very good family and lived in Europe 
a long time, and even studied art for a year or 
two in Paris, while she was wrestling with the 
grim and terrible problem ofwhatlife really means. 

That’s all we know — but beginning with it 
I can speculate about her for hours. Who were 
her dear companions ? Which of those she loved 
did she love most? Does she ever think of them 
now? But I don’t waste much time over thaty 
for I’m sure she does. When she is describing 
something to us she has a trick of painting 
in the air with her thumb. As I watch her do 
it the class-rooiji seems to fade away, and I can 
’most see the big studio in the Colorossi, and her 
easel, and queer-looking students crowding round 
to argue over her work. But when I try to 
picture her there I can’t do it. It is never a girl 
who comes before me; always a tall, black- 
veiled nun, with her crucifix at her side and her 
silver cross above her heart. The nun frightens 
the others away; the imaginary companions with 
their tousled hair and their queer clothes shrink 
into the background like vanishing shadows, 
and everything grows dark, and I’m sitting in 
the study-hall again, and I realize that I don’t 
know a thing about Sister Irmingarde and prob- 
ably never will. 


201 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


' But I am drifting from my narrative. I will 
recall myself to it after expressing one more 
thought which has come to me and is too good 
to waste. Sometimes the world seems to me 
like a big library, where other human beings are 
books. I look at some of the books long enough 
to read the titles and decide that I don’t want to 
read more. I open others and read them almost 
at a glance — as if they were primers. Often 
I read a book through and am dreadfully dis- 
appointed in it, but’ sometimes I read one with 
interest and pleasure. Then once in a long, 
long time I see a fascinating book, beautifully 
bound, and I grasp it with trembling hands and 
open it with a long breath of delight — and find 
that it is printed in a language I don’t know 
and can never understand. Such a book is 
Sister Irmingarde. 

; Isn’t the way I have put that simply beau- 
tiful? The strangest thing about it is that I 
didn’t have it in my note-book. It just dripped 
ofF my pen. 

I will now return to Mabel — and it’s high time 
I did. All this time she has been prodding me 
in the side with that pencil and reminding me 
that I am writing one of our experiences for my 
book, and not an ode to Sister Irmingarde. Mabel 
says that when I write with a rapt expression 
202 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


she always knows I am writing ^about Sister 
Irmingarde, for when I am writing of anything 
else my mien*is cold, detached, and almost stern. 
I am letting Mabel hold the ink while I write 
to-day. It is little enough to do for her in her 
sorrow and remorse. 

Return with me now, gentle reader, to the 
study-hall in which the girls of our set were 
sitting with their reluctant eyes upon their 
books. Suddenly the voice of Mabel Blossom 
broke the silence. (Mabel thinks I ought to 
make this paragraph the real beginning of this 
chapter, and strike out all the rest. Little 
does she wot, poor worm, that^the rest is at- 
mosphere and has to be.) 

When Mabel’s thrilling tones had broken the 
silence of our cloister class-room Mabel went 
on to say she had received a letter from her 
mother that day telling about a wonderful ex- 
periment people were making in Paris. (Mabel’s 
mother is living in Paris this winter.) She told 
Mabel the fad of the moment there was the 
grouchometre — ^which we might call in English 
the grouchometer. She said the grouchometer 
was a list of dreadful things that might happen 
to one, and that the men and women in Paris 
society were drawing up these lists beforehand, 
and then comparing them at the end of a few 
203 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


months with what actually did happen, and 
finding that nine times out of ten the things that 
really happened , were not on their lists at all! 
So French philosophers said this proved that the 
things that did happen didn’t really amount to 
anything, because ‘^no thought had been given 
them or apprehension felt over them in calm, 
reflective moments.” They said it just that 
way. 

Mabel’s mother added that if a misfortune 
on the list did happen the philosophers said there 
was less reason than ever to worry, because one 
had expected it and had been prepared for it. 
She said all the French men and women she 
knew were making up grouchometer lists, and 
the newspapers were giving prizes for the best 
ones. A woman she knew had won a prize with 
a list Mrs. Blossom sent to Mabel. Mabel 
read off* all the items, and the girls copied them 
as j^st as she read them: 

1. Loss of a loved one. 

2. Betrayal of love. 

3. Betrayal of trust. 

4. Financial losses. 

5. Illness. 

6. Exile from home. 

7. Loneliness. 

8. Thwarted ambition. 

204 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


9. To feel humiliated. 

10. To be compelled to live with unsympa- 
thetic persons. 

1 1 . Deprivation of personal liberty. 

12. To be ordered to undergo a cure for 
obesity. 

Kittie James groaned when the last one was 
reached, but she needn’t have. Every girl 
there knew the lovely, easy time Kittie had get- 
ting thin with my help. Mabel waited for Kittie 
to get through groaning; it took quite a long 
time. Then Mabel said she thought it would 
be a beautiful plan to write out some grouch- 
ometer lists of our own without delay and wait 
and see if any of the things happened to us. 
All the girls liked the idea — principally, I 
think, because it gave them an excuse to drop 
their books. We made the lists that very hour 
and compared them in the evening; and it was 
fascinating to see how much alike some were 
and how different others were. We saw right 
off, too, how easy it made life. For, of course, 
if you think of all the very worst things that could 
happen and then they don’t happen you have 
cause for joy. And if they do happen you’re 
all ready for them, just as the French say. 
Every blessed girl in the class began her grouch- 
ometer list with the same sentence: 

205 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


I. To fail in the final examinations. 

This does not mean that all the girls are eager 
students, either, as a thoughtless reader might 
infer. It is a strange fact that even the girls who 
hate books most hate failure at examinations 
more. This is partly because the nuns look so 
grieved, but principally, I think, because the 
girls who pass look so superior. Even Kittie 
James put it first on her list, and when she read 
it out in trembling tones we all laughed, which 
was rude and unkind and hurt the dear child’s 
feelings. But it was funny, for Kittie has been 
drinking at St. Catharine’s fountain of knowl- 
edge for three years and has failed in every 
single examination she has ever had except 
one. In that one she succeeded, with the help 
of the whole school — an event I have described 
in my other book. 

When we had stopped laughing Kittie re- 
marked that, after all, the French were perfectly 
right about things not mattering when the mind 
was prepared for them. She knew, because her 
mind was always prepared for not passing exam- 
inations, so it never really worried her when she 
failed. She had put it on her list, she said, 
because she couldn’t think of anything else that 
would worry her, either; and she added that if 
she could only get Sister Irmingarde to prepare 
206 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


her mmd, too, so she wouldn’t be surprised and 
grieved when Kittie failed, it would be a com- 
fort. 

That gave Mabel her idea and she shared it 
with her dear companions without delay. She 
said she thought it would be simply great to get 
up a grouchometer list for Sister Irmingarde, 
putting down all the things that might happen 
to her. Then, if the things did happen, Sis- 
ter Irmingarde would be prepared and cheerful 
about them, and if they didn’t she would have 
lots to be thankful for. You can see what a 
lovely idea this was. The girls shrieked with 
delight over it, and turned admiring eyes on 
Mabel, and then reached for fresh sheets of 
paper so they could make up Sister Irmingade’s 
grouchometer list without a moment’s delay. 
For half an hour nothing was heard in the study- 
hall but the scratching of our busy pens. Once 
Sister Harmona opened the door and glanced 
in at us and withdrew with a peaceful smile. 
She thought we were making notes of our studies. 
(Sister Irmingarde would have known better.) 

After every girl had finished her list we com- 
pared them and got up the final list by taking 
the most helpful lines from all the others. At 
the end this was Sister Irmingarde’s grouch- 
ometer; 


207 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


1. To have the whole class fail in the spring 
examinations. (With her mind used to this mis- 
fortune, you can see what a comfort it would 
be to Sister Irmingarde to have only half the 
class fail. If half the class failed, though, when 
she expected only a few girls to — but Mabel 
Blossom says she is perfectly sure Sister Ir- 
mingarde would say I need not “develop this 
thought.”) 

2. To have us try some new experiment, like 
our Beauty Culture Club and the Motion Study 
Club. (We knew we were sure to do it, and it 
seemed a good opportunity to get Sister Irmin- 
garde’s mind in “a receptive state.”) 

3. Loss of Mabel Blossom’s love. (Mabel 
wrote that on her own list and made us put it 
on the final one. She said while we were writing 
down terrible calamities we might as well put in 
the worst, especially as the whole thing was her 
idea. We put it in to please her, but it reminded 
me of the most terrible thing of all, so I put that 
right at the head of my own private list: To 
have Sister Irmingarde laugh at me.) 

4. To have us all lose our love for St. Catha- 
rine’s after we graduated. (That was Adeline 
Thurston’s idea. We wrote it down, but the 
girls didn’t like it very much. It didn’t “carry 
conviction,” as real writers say. Finally Mabel 

208 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


Blossom suggested that we cross it out and sub- 
stitute this one: 

4. To have us become nuns and live with her 
always. (We knew that was a fine one, and 
long afterward Sister Edna told Mabel Muriel 
Murphy with her own lips that Sister Irmingarde 
had turned pale when she read it.) 

5. To have Kittie James get fatter. (That was 
Mabel’s idea, too. Kittie didn’t like it, of course, 
but, as we pointed out to her, we had to prepare 
Sister Irmingarde’s mind for the way Kittie 
would probably look in a few months.) 

6. To have every girl in our class receive a box 
from home the same day. (We knew this would 
prepare her for having half of us get boxes at 
Easter.) 

7. To have us all break down from overwork. 
(Mabel thought that ought to go first on the 
list, so that if we didn’t do any work at all 
Sister would be glad and grateful; but I thought 
it was wiser to drop in the idea unobtrusively, and 
the other girls agreed with me — so we left it No. 7.) 

8. To be the heroine of May Iverson’s first 
novel. (I think that was silly, for I never write 
of any heroine until I have probed her heart to 
its very core, and full well I wot I’ll never get a 
chance to probe Sister Irmingarde’s. But the 
girls insisted, so that line stayed.) 

209 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


9. To lose her love for us. (This last one 
was very hard to decide on. Some girls had 
written To lose her beauty and they thought that 
was better. Mabel Muriel Murphy, who is 
very devout, had written To lose her faith — but 
she scratched it out quickly when she met our 
horrified eyes. Finally we all agreed on Maudie 
Joyce’s line. To lose her love for us. For, of 
course, if she ceased to love us, but had to keep 
on teaching us, it might be a strain.) 

Then the list was ready and we looked at Mabel 
Blossom and waited for her to tell us what to 
do next. 

Mabel did it. She said we must make a 
copy of the grouchometer in our best hand- 
writing — ^which is Adeline Thurston’s — and send 
it to Sister Irmingarde that very evening with 
Mrs. Blossom’s letter, so Sister would know what 
it meant. We all agreed to that except Adeline 
Thurston, who had to do the work. She said 
her hand was tired. But we showed her how 
selfish she was, and at last she copied the list 
and we put it and the letter into a large envelope. 

While we were wondering how to get it to 
Sister Irmingarde, who might be in any one of 
dozens of places in the great convent buildings. 
Sister Edna came into the study-hall and sat 
down at Sister Irmingarde’s desk. We gave 
210 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


the envelope to Mabel Muriel, with signs that she 
was to take it up and ask Sister Edna to do us 
the great favor of having it delivered that evening. 

Sister hesitated a moment after Mabel Mu- 
riel spoke and looked as if she meant to ask 
some questions. Then, as Mabel Muriel main- 
tained a dignified silence. Sister bowed and said 
she would deliver the letter with pleasure. By 
that time the study-hour was over, so she sent 
us to our own rooms. The other events of the 
evening, such as eating a little nourishing fudge 
and saying our prayers and going to bed, have 
nothing to do with this narrative — though , 
Mabel Blossom says she is surprised indeed that 
I do not pause here to describe them. 

What I will describe instead is the strange 
effect the Grouchometer Club had on my dear 
companions. As the days passed it led them to 
what Mabel Blossom calls ‘‘an excess of girlish 
abandon.’’ They seemed to think they could 
risk doing everything that entered their heads 
simply because it was, or was not, on their 
grouchometer lists. They said their minds 
were prepared for anything and that nothing 
mattered, anyway, because French philosophers 
said so. Mabel Blossom was the worst of all — 
for of course she could put the blame on her 
mother if sad things happened. 

2II 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


Sad things began to happen right off. As a 
beginning all the girls stopped studying. Kittie 
James started a new club — ^The Butterflies — 
‘‘Organized solely for the Pursuit of Pleasure.” 
The first rule of the club was that any member 
of the Butterflies who made an intelligent re- 
mark, or even one she thought was intelligent, 
was fined five cents. Kittie James told me with 
her own lips that the treasurer didn’t collect 
enough to buy a bottle of olives. The Butter- 
flies made things very gay. They had a spread 
’most every night in Kittie’s room and Kittie 
gained seven pounds in one week. Of course 
she didn’t care as long as our minds were pre- 
pared for it. But the infirmarians didn’t know 
anything about the grouchometer, so their minds 
were not prepared; and they were shocked and 
grieved when Kittie was borne to the infirmary 
again and had to stay there two days. The 
Butterflies went right on celebrating, however, 
and when they were not having spreads they 
were having headaches and wandering o’er the 
campus with dull, glazed eyes and their hands 
to their brows. 

The gentle reader must not think from these 
sad facts that all the girls joined the Butterflies. 
Nay, there were noble souls among us with high 
ideals. I was one of them and Adeline Thurston 


212 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


was another. Both Adeline and I had long 
thought that our brains were being overtaxed 
by study and that we had been neglecting our 
art. I hope the gentle reader knows by this 
time that our art is literature — mine prose and 
Adeline’s poetry. So we stopped studying and 
wrote and wrote and wrote. I wrote four 
stories in one week and Adeline wrote nine poems. 
And we wandered by the riverside and read our 
works to each other and had perfectly beautiful 
times except when we were in class, when it was 
sometimes embarrassing not to know our lessons. 
We tried to start interesting discussions and things 
like that in class and it worked with some of the 
Sisters, especially Sister Harmona. We can 
always start her on the subject of Paris vs, 
Touraine pronunciation, and she will run on 
peacefully till the lesson half-hour is over. But 
it is a strange and interesting fact that we can 
never lead Sister Irmingarde into other fields 
of thought unless she wants to go; and when she 
does go she always knows she is there and takes 
us with her and makes us think as hyd and study 
as much there as anywhere else.mX 
The Grouchometer Club and the Butterfly 
Club had been celebrating ’most a week before 
I noticed something queer about Sister Irmin- 
garde. When I did it wasn’t really anything I 
213 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


could tell the girls about, for I didn’t exactly 
understand what it meant myself. It was noth- 
ing that Sister Irmingarde did or said; it was 
principally her manner that was different. 
The only way I can describe her manner is to 
say that she acted as if she had gone inside of 
herself and closed the door and wouldn’t be at 
home if one rapped. 

I spoke to Kittie James about it and asked 
her if she had noticed it, but Kittie only stared 
and said she hadn’t. That didn’t mean much, 
though, for Kittie was not an observant girl 
at any time, and after three weeks of celebra- 
tion with the Butterflies, with visits to the in- 
firmary thrown in between, she wouldn’t notice 
anything, anyway. The next person I spoke 
to was Adeline Thurston, but Adeline was so 
absorbed in a new poem that she didn’t even 
hear the question, and after asking it three times 
in one evening I gave up. Then I asked Maudie 
Joyce if she had noticed anything, and she said 
she had noticed that Sister Irmingarde seemed 
‘‘detached.” 

Maudie is always using that word. She read 
somewhere about some one who lived a life 
“detached from her kind” and she never gets 
tired quoting it. So she would probably have 
said it about Sister Irmingarde whether it fitted 
214 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


or not, but the strange thing about it was that 
it did fit Sister Irmingarde perfectly. 

Maudie went on to say that she thought Sister 
was ‘Metached’’ because she was so busy getting 
ready for our ^‘exhibition” exercises in June. 
For we were to have an unusually elaborate 
program, though I have forgotten to say any- 
thing about it until now. There are always a 
thousand things for the Sisters to do before Com- 
mencement, so I thought Maudie might be right 
for once. Certainly Sister Irmingarde seemed far 
more busy about other things than about us. 
She was away from us more than half the time, 
and she always seemed to be talking to other 
Sisters and forgetting that we were there. If 
such a thing could be even hinted about Sister 
Irmingarde, I might say she almost neglected 
us. She let us recite ’most any way we pleased, 
and she never seemed to see the red eyes and 
headachy looks of the Butterflies, nor the pounds 
and pounds that were putting themselves on 
Kittie James’s form before our horrified eyes. 

This went on for two weeks — and the longer 
it went on the less I understood it. I got very 
much interested indeed and watched Sister 
Irmingarde with wide, intelligent eyes. But 
all I could see was that once or twice her eyes 
narrowed as she looked at us, as they do when she 

215 


15 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


is thinking of something special, and ever and 
anon she smiled to herself in a queer little way, as 
if she knew something we didn’t know. Without 
understanding just why, I began to feel as if 
we were like the Italians who live on the sides of 
Vesuvius and sing and dance in their vineyards 
regardless of the crater boiling within and getting 
ready to blow them up. We were exactly like 
that, too, as it happened; so the gentle reader 
can see again how wonderful is the intuition of 
the Literary Artist. 

Our explosion came with terrible suddenness, 
just as the upheavals of Vesuvius come. It was 
on a bright, glad day late in February when the 
Grouchometer Club and the Butterflies had 
lasted almost four weeks. The Butterflies had 
had the biggest spread of all the night before, 
so the girls of our class were feeling very dull 
and languid as they strolled along the hall tow- 
ard Sister Irmingarde’s room. But that did 
not worry them, for they did not expect to do 
much that morning, anyway, and they knew that 
by noon they would probably feel better. 

Adeline and I had been at the banquet as 
honored guests and had read our works to the 
girls, and they had been so lovely and enthusias- 
tic about Adeline’s poems and my story that we 
had both eaten too much afterward to show our 
216 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


gratitude. So we crawled along with the rest, 
too sick and tired to talk to one another; but ever 
and anon some girl groaned and others echoed 
the groan to show that they felt the same 
way. 

Then suddenly there was a shriek. It was 
high and wild, in a voice we recognized as no 
other than that of Kittie James. Another shriek 
followed it. There was a rush forward, and then 
perfect silence. I was behind the rest, thinking 
bitterly of how burnt Kittie’s fudge was the night 
before and how much worse burnt fudge is the 
next morning than any other kind, but it didn’t 
take me long to reach what newspaper-writers 
call ‘‘the scene of action.” When I got there I 
found the girls of our class standing in front of 
the class bulletin board as if they had been 
nailed there and then hypnotized. Their mouths 
were open, their hands were hanging limply at 
their sides, and their staring, horrified eyes were 
fixed on a notice written in Sister Irmingarde’s 
flowing, beautiful handwriting. It was strange 
and terrible that anything that looked so lovely 
should fill the human heart with such despair. 
This is what we read: 

The written examinations of the class will begin 
this morning at ten o’clock and will continue for 
217 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


three days. The branches covered will be taken up 
in the order named : 

Greek, Latin, Geometry, Physics, Geology, English, 
French, Mathematics, and Botany. 

For a moment we stood there as if we had been 
turned to stone. Then everybody talked at 
once. We forgot that the bulletin board was just 
outside of Sister Irmingarde’s class-room, and 
that she was doubtless there that very minute 
waiting for us. The noise we made brought her 
to the door, and when she opened it and stood 
on the threshold looking at us, with her eye- 
brows raised and an expression of surprise on her 
face, our excitement stopped as suddenly as it 
had begun, and the girls walked into the class- 
room without a word and sat down at their 
desks. 

When I dared to raise my eyes to Sister 
Irmingarde’s face I saw that she was looking 
more like herself than she had looked for a long 
time. She was very quiet, but alert and busi- 
nesslike, arranging papers on her desk, and 
making some notes that seemed to be important, 
for she frowned a little over them as she wrote. 
Then she raised her beautiful eyes and looked 
around the room with her own natural, wonder- 
ful smile — and I know a good many of the girls 
felt big lumps in their throats. For that smile 
218 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


was the smile she always gave us when she 
expected us to do our very best — ^just before 
examinations and during the Commencement 
exercises, and at other times when she knew 
we were frightened and needed encouragement. 

We had never needed it as much as we did 
now, but instead of helping us to-day it made us 
feel worse. We knew that this time she expected 
what we could not do. We knew that lately 
every blessed one of us had been dawdling and 
wasting dozens of school-hours when all of them 
all these months were leading up to this one ex- 
amination — the great final examination before 
we left school. We knew that if we were ‘^con- 
ditioned” — that is, if we didn’t pass — we could 
not be promoted; and I think we knew, too, every 
last one of us, that we were not likely to pass 
after those silly spreads and all our foolish 
neglect of our school-work and with our heads 
aching in the bargain. Besides, the final ex- 
aminations of our class had never before come 
in February. They were always in May — ’most 
three months later. 

There wasn’t a sound in the room. Every 
girl sat perfectly still, staring down at her desk, 
on which everything was arranged ready for her 
to begin — virgin sheets of paper, fresh pens, 
full Ink-bottles, and neat little printed lists of 
219 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


questions — terrifying questions, worse than they 
had ever been before, and covering, I thought, 
every subject I had ever heard of and forgotten. 
Everything was before us but knowledge. We 
had to use all these things putting down what we 
didn’t know. 

I thought of the grouchometer lists, and even 
in that terrible hour I curled my lip in scorn, 
for I had learned that the French philosophers 
were exactly like the rest of us and didn’t know 
a thing. I could have told them how little the 
mind is prepared for a terrible calamity when it 
really happens, even if one has referred to it 
in a light and jesting way. I felt as if I were 
dropping from the top to the bottom of the high- 
est building in the world in the fastest elevator 
ever made. I heard my heart pounding like 
the engine in a big ship — but all the time my 
imagination was working harder than it ever 
worked before. I saw my mother die of grief 
because I failed and my father ashamed of me 
and my whole life different because I had not 
gone on with my class. And I thought of that 
horrible grouchometer list again and ground my 
teeth in voiceless agony. When I described 
my emotions afterward to the other girls they 
told me they had felt the very same way. You 
can imagine how easy it was for them to pass an 
220 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


examination when they were experiencing these 
strange and terrible emotions. 

Finally I remembered that my father was a 
general and that an Iverson dies fighting if he 
has to die, so I dipped my pen in the mucilage- 
bottle and went to work. I heard a few pens 
scratch around me and a few feet move, and I 
knew that Maudie Joyce and Mabel Blossom 
and Mabel Muriel Murphy had begun, too. 
Kittie James lay where she had fallen, as they 
say about dead soldiers on the battle-field — and 
for a minute I ’most envied her. Then I knew 
by her stifled sobs that she still lived and that 
‘‘calm, reflective moments” had not prepared 
her mind for what was happening any more 
than they had prepared ours. 

When things happen in literature that are too 
terrible to describe real writers put asterisks on 
the paper and let the reader imagine what those 
things were. That is what I will do now, draw- 
ing a veil over those three days of our agony. 
One thing I must explain, though. Everybody 
admitted that there had never before been such 
a hard examination at St. Catharine’s as the one 
we were having then. We wrote all day and 
studied half the night, but of course we couldn’t 
make up in -three nights of study for weeks of 
idleness. Finally it was over and what there was 
221 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


left of us longed to die. The only person who 
remained perfectly calm and happy was Sister 
Irmingarde. She seemed to be sustained by a 
beautiful hope. I don’t know where she got it. 

For days after the examinations we girls 
hardly dared to look at each other. Several 
packed their trunks, to be all ready to start home. 
The morning of the fourth day after we had 
turned in our papers we found the bulletin board 
covered with little notes for members of the class. 

One was for me. It told me I had failed in 
Physics, Geology, and Mathematics. I was 
not surprised — except at passing in the other 
things. I thought I had failed in them all. 
But of course I couldn’t pass with three fail- 
ures. Another note was for Maudie. She had 
failed in English, Botany, and Greek. Another 
told Mabel Blossom she had failed in Latin, 
French, and Physics. Mabel Muriel Murphy 
had got through in everything but Physics. 
Kittie James had failed in six studies. To make 
a long and heartrending story short, no one had 
passed but the grinds who were not in our set. 
Not one in our set had passed. All the leaders of 
the class were conditioned. Not one of us could 
go up with the class. It was like thirty funerals 
all at once. It seemed to be worse, because at 
the funerals the dead don’t suffer and we did. 


222 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


The girls went to their rooms after they had 
read their notes and more of them began to 
pack. I decided that I would be a Red Cross 
nurse and go to the front, in some country where 
there was war, and nurse soldiers. Mabel 
Blossom said she was going straight to Paris 
to tell her mother and her friends what she 
thought about grouchometer lists. Mabel Muriel 
Murphy said she guessed she would go to Molokai 
and spend her few remaining years nursing the 
lepers. We tried to speak to some of the Sisters 
about our plans, but they all seemed too busy 
to talk and strangely uninterested. Sister Ir- 
mingarde stayed away from the class-room all 
day, so we knew the grouchometer list had not 
prepared her mind, either. We wandered about 
like lost souls in outer darkness. No one loved 
us. No one seemed sorry for us. It was almost 
as if we were wretched shadows. 

There was a notice on the bulletin board that 
afternoon calling us to the study-hall at eight 
o’clock that evening. We knew what it meant, 
and all we suffered before was nothing to all we 
suffered now, as we waited for what we knew was 
coming. 

At the stroke of eight we were in our places 
and at five minutes past eight Sister Irmingarde 
came into the room. For a moment she stood 
223 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


looking at us without speaking, and she had the 
detached look Maudie Joyce talks about. We 
couldn’t see her very well. All our eyes were 
full of tears. But suddenly a wonderful light 
flashed over her face, and she smiled at us the 
way my sister Grace smiles at her baby when he 
is yelling for something that isn’t good for him. 
It is a smile with all sorts of things in it — 
amusement, and sympathy, and understanding, 
and love — but more love than anything else. As I 
watched it on Sister Irmingarde’s face I seemed 
for just one minute to see down deep into her 
beautiful heart. I knew then that she loved us, 
and that she always would. 

Then she spoke to us. It wouldn’t have dis- 
turbed us much to have a cannon-ball go through 
the room, or the roof drop in, or any dreadful 
thing like that happen. The worst thing that 
could happen had happened. But when Sister 
Irmingarde spoke in her simple, direct way, in 
a tone that was a little more matter-of-fact than 
usual, I fell backward in my seat. For these 
were her words: 

‘^As you already know, our ^quiz’ has been a 
very sad affair. You have, however, seven 
weeks in which to get ready for your final 
examinations. I believe, and I am sure you 
agree with me, that with hard work — ” 

224 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


That is all I heard. It is all anybody heard. 
A strange sigh swept over the room, as if every 
girl had been holding her breath and had sud- 
denly let it go. The next instant the class 
began to cheer, and kept on cheering till the 
inkstands rattled. That hideous examination 
had not been an examination at all! It had 
been merely a “quiz” — a test — and our marks 
would not be counted! 

Sister Irmingarde let us cheer till we got 
tired, while she stood still looking at us, with 
that loving, understanding smile. When we 
quieted down she gave us the most inspiring 
talk we had ever had from anyone. I shall not 
repeat it, but I will give the gentle reader one 
instance of its effect, because that will be a more 
artistic climax. 

When I went back to my room I passed Kittie 
James’s door, and as I passed I heard Kittie’s 
voice. So I knocked and went in, expecting 
to find some of the girls of our crowd. But 
Kittie was alone. She was standing in front of 
her window and talking to something with such 
interest that she did not hear me enter. As 
I drew near I saw that the thing she was address- 
ing was a cream puff — a great, rich, soft one 
that was resting on the window-sill. I went and 
stood beside Kittie and looked at it, too, and then 
225 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 

Kittie saw me and explained that she was bid- 
ding it farewell forever. 

“No more spreads/’ said Kittie in loud, de- 
termined tones; and she threw the cream pulF 
out of the window. “No more fat. No more 
indolence.” 

She pinched my arm blue in her excitement, 
and went on to say that she was going to be a 
student and make something of her life, as 
Sister Irmingarde wished us all to do. 

I listened, and agreed that she was right. 
Then Kittie went to her closet and got tins of 
sardines and glasses of jam and began to throw 
them out of the window, like an English militant 
suffragette — except that the suffragette would 
throw things in. But the spirit was the same. 
When Kittie had thrown them all out she stopped 
and thought a minute and turned to me with 
the light of a great thought on her sweet young 
face. 

“Just think,” she said in hushed tones. “We 
made out the grouchometer list for Sister 
Irmingarde with all sorts of dreadful things in 
it, and Sister Irmingarde is the only one among 
us that did not have perfectly dreadful things 
happen to her. What does it mean?” 

“It means,” said Mabel Blossom, who had 
opened the door and joined us unobserved, 
226 


OUR GROUCHOMETER CLUB 


‘‘that in a contest between Sister Irmingarde 
and the grouchometer you can lay a wager on 
Sister Irmingarde, every time!” 

And when we thought it over we decided it 
did mean exactly that! 


X 


THE SHADOW OF THE ANGEL 

N the morning of the 10th of March 
I awoke with a strange weight upon 
my heart. At first I thought it was 
fudge, for I had eaten a great deal of 
fudge the night before; but after- 
ward I knew it was a premonition. 

At nine o’clock I went to Sister Irmingarde’s 
class-room, where we girls had to discuss current 
events, and prove that we knew something about 
them. AH the newspapers were full of the 
McNamara case, and I had a great many 
thoughts to express about it. Therefore I was 
dreadfully disappointed when I foiftid Sister 
Edna and not Sister Irmingarde waiting to take 
the class. Sister Edna always takes the events 
class when Sister Irmingarde is called away by 
Mother Ernesta or to see important visitors; 
so, though deeply pained, I was not surprised. 
The class work went on as usual, and I held the 
girls spellbound, as I often do, by the strange 
228 



THE SHADOW OF THE ANGEL 


and interesting things I knew and they hadn’t 
even dreamed of. But I don’t think Sister Edna 
heard much that we said. We all noticed that 
she was absent-minded; and when the discussion 
was over, and I had told all I knew and some 
things besides, she left the room without waiting 
to point out my worst errors in a confidential 
chat, as usual. 

The next day Sister Irmingarde did not come 
to her class-room, nor the next, nor the next. 
By that time we knew, of course, that she was 
ill, and we decided that she had a little attack 
of influenza. Some of the girls remembered 
that she had coughed and looked feverish the 
last day she was with us. We were too busy to 
think much about anything, however, for a few 
days. Everybody wanted us to do things that 
took every minute of our time, and it seemed to 
me that seven different nuns were taking Sister 
Irmingarde’s various classes. We were so in- 
terested in ^watching these nuns, and studying 
them as individuals, and reading their hearts, 
and talking them over, and deciding that not 
one of them could compare with Sister Irmin- 
garde in any way, that we did not realize how 
fast time was passing. 

Every morning and evening we asked whether 
Sister Irmingarde was better, and the answer 
229 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


was always that she was ‘^comfortable.” We 
sent her our love, too, and every one of us sent 
her flowers. But it never occurred to us that 
she was really ill, with doctors and nurses, and 
medicines and thermometers and fever charts 
and the other things that go with real sickness. 
I, for one, went to her class-room every morning 
expecting to see her there. I always had a 
little thrill when I opened the door and looked 
for her, and then a little shock when I saw some 
one else in her place. Away down inside of me 
something whispered “another whole day!” 
After that — though it seems too strange and 
terrible to be true as I look back on it — my 
mind would be taken up with other things. 
And it was the same with all the girls. 

But one day, after Sister Irmingarde had been 
away from us for more than a week, I felt some- 
thing strange in the convent atmosphere. You 
know how it is just before a great storm, when 
nature seems to take a long, deep breath and get 
ready for what is coming. In one way, every- 
thing was the same as usual. Work was going 
on; the convent bells were reminding us of 
hours and classes; I saw the nuns in the long halls 
going about their duties; yet every one seemed to 
be listening. While I was wondering what it 
meant Sister Edna passed me, walking quickly. 

230 


THE SHADOW OF THE ANGEL 


She was looking straight ahead, so she did not 
see me. Her face had the look I had seen on 
all the other faces I had met that morning — a 
strained look, wide-eyed and frightened, as if 
she expected to hear something dreadful. The 
sound of my heels on the polished floor of the 
hall seemed to me to echo through the whole 
building; I began to walk on tiptoe without 
knowing why I did it. 

When I opened the door of Sister Irmingarde’s 
class-room I think I had begun to understand 
what it all meant — for this time I did not expect 
to see her at her desk. She was not there, but 
our French teacher. Sister Harmona, sat in her 
place. Her eyes were red, and when she opened 
a book I saw her hands tremble. The girls were 
in their seats — Mabel Blossom, Maudie Joyce, 
Kittie James, and dozens of others — and as I 
glanced at them, and then away, afraid of what 
I saw, they all looked alike, for every face had 
the same expression. They were leaning a little 
forward. Their eyes were very wide open, and 
they seemed to be afraid to speak. The same 
queer hush lay over the room that filled the 
whole convent. 

I went straight to Sister Harmona’s desk 
and spoke to her, but the voice I heard saying 
the words did not seem to be mine. It was cold 
231 


16 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


and steady, though I could feel my heart pound- 
ing against my side. 

‘‘Sister,’’ I said, “please tell us. Is Sister 
Irmingarde very ill?” 

Sister Harmona looked at me, and then looked 
away. She is a plump little nun who makes me 
think of a fat wren — her eyes are so dark and 
bright, and she is so quick in all her movements. 
Usually she is very gay and cheerful. Sometimes 
I have seen her annoyed or excited over our 
French verbs, but never sad. So if I could have 
felt surprised at anything just then, I should 
have felt surprised to see her brown eyes fill 
with tears and slowly brim over. I watched the 
big drops fall, first on her cheeks, then on her 
white linen guimpe, until she bent her head and 
fumbled for her handkerchief in her long, flowing 
sleeve. She tried to speak but cou d not; but 
it didn’t matter, for now we knew the truth. 
There was not a sound in the room. It seemed 
to me I stood there for years, watching Sister 
Harmona’s tears falling and fall ng and falling; 
but after the first minute I don’t think I saw them 
at all. Instead, I saw Sister Irmingarde sitting 
in her old place. I even thought I heard her 
beautiful voice. 

“Oh, my girls, my girls, what will you do 
next?” 


232 


THE SHADOW OF THE ANGEL 


How often she had said that to us, in despair! 
How much she had done for us I How little we had 
done for her. As I stood, dazed, I remembered 
it all. The years seemed to roll backward before 
my eyes, like moving pictures, but reversed, so 
that the old school-days came first; and every 
picture had Sister Irmingarde in it — Sister 
Irmingarde, who knew everything, and was 
willing to teach us all that we would learn. 

Then the door opened, and Mabel Muriel 
Murphy came in, crying. 

‘‘Oh, girls!” she said, and she dropped into 
her seat and put her arms down on the desk and 
buried her face in them, and sobbed. “Oh, 
girls! Sister Irmingarde is dying!” 

The words rolled about the big, quiet room as 
if they, too, were frightened, and were trying to 
get out and away from themselves. No one 
answered them. No one could. I went to my 
seat and stared out of the window, and tried to 
be calm and to understand what it all meant. 
Two of the Minims were rolling their hoops 
along a path that was too narrow for them both, 
and I watched the hoops meet and go down. 
An old gardener was coming toward them 
wheeling a barrow full of fresh earth for the 
early flower-beds. I watched him, too, and 
wondered how these little things could go on 

233 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


happening when Sister Irmingarde was dying. 
Finally I heard Sister Harmona speaking. 

She was saying that we must not give up 
hope. Sister Irmingarde had a serious case of 
pneumonia — a very serious case indeed — and 
the crisis, to-day, found her extremely weak; 
but a great specialist had been sent for, and he 
was doing everything that could be done. We 
must remember, she said, that the one thing 
we could do for Sister Irmingarde was to keep 
steadily at work, as she would wish us to do, and 
lighten the tasks of her substitutes by helping 
them in every way. She asked us to pray for 
Sister Irmingarde — as if she needed to, when we 
were all doing it, deep in our hearts, that very 
minute! She turned to her notes then, and 
began the French lesson, and every girl there set 
her teeth and resolved to go through that lesson 
well, if she died doing it. We got through, 
every one of us; and Sister Harmona was simply 
wonderful in helping us, and understanding us, 
and keeping us so busy, at the same time, that we 
couldn’t think. At the end of the lesson she 
gathered up her notes and turned to us with a 
little smile that shone dimly through her tears, 
like a rainbow through a mist. 

‘^How good you are, my children,” she said in 
French. ‘‘Some day I will describe this hour 

234 


THE SHADOW OF THE ANGEL 


to Sister Irmingarde, and it will make her 
happy. Adieu. Pray for her.” 

Then she went away, without another word, 
and we began to talk to one another, almost in 
whispers, for her last words had comforted the 
girls very much. 

“Some day I will describe this hour to Sister 
Irmingarde,” she had said, “and it will make her 
happy.” 

Surely that sounded as if she thought Sister 
would get well. But Mabel Muriel Murphy, 
who is very devout, was sure Sister Harmona 
merely meant that she would tell Sister Irmin- 
garde when they met in Heaven. 

I left them arguing over this when I went to 
Sister Cecilia’s*^ room to take my music lesson. 
If Sister Irmingarde wanted us to go on as usual 
while she was dying, I would go on — as long as 
I could. But what I wanted to do was to sit 
still and pinch myself until I awoke from my 
horrible dream. 

When I turned into the music-hall I noticed 
that even here everything seemed unreal. Usu- 
ally this hall is the noisiest place in the con- 
vent, for dozens of little music-rooms open off 
it, and dozens of girls are practising dozens of 
different things on dozens of different pianos, 
and the racket is frightful. But to-day half 

235 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


the piafios were silent, and the rest were going 
intermittently, while groups of girls stood on 
every side, talking under their breath. Even 
the nuns were stopping to speak to each other 
— asking a quick question, and then going on 
with a gesture of despair. 

The long, dim hall seemed gloomier than ever 
before, as if the Angel of Death, hovering over 
the convent, had covered everything in it with 
the shadow of his great black wings. 

I knew now what the look on all those faces 
meant. It meant fear. It almost meant terror 
— and you cannot imagine how strange it seemed 
to me to see this in a convent, where they think 
of death as a welcome friend, waiting to open 
the door of Heaven and let them pass in. A 
Sister who dies finds her reward a little sooner 
than the rest, they say. That is all; so why 
should they grieve for her.? But it was different 
to-day. I wondered why, and yet I knew. It 
was because Sister Irmingarde herself was dif- 
ferent. They all loved her. They all needed 
her, just as we girls did. They all felt they 
could not go on without her. 

As I dragged my feet down the hall, that 
seemed a thousand miles long, I caught a few 
words here and there. Some one said tanks 
of oxygen had been sent in, and that an- 
236 


THE SHADOW OF THE ANGEL 


other great specialist was coming. On^ Sister 
told another, with a break in her voice, ‘T 
can’t imagine St. Catharine’s without her. 
Surely the very walls will fall if Irmingarde 
goes.” And the other answered, brokenly, 
“She is the bearer of •tiur torch.” An Irish 
lay Sister, who was on her knees polishing the 
floor, stopped them to ask for news, and after 
they had answered and passed on she remained 
on her knees, huddled in a queer little bunch, 
praying, with her face in her hands and her 
tears falling between her fingers. 

I was at Sister Cecilia’s door now, and I 
opened it and went in with reluctant feet. Sister 
Cecilia has been my teacher for years, but I 
have never loved her, though I love her music. 
The girls say she puts the best of herself into 
that. Certainly there doesn’t seem to be much 
left to go anywhere else. She teaches only a 
few of the most advanced pupils, and she wants 
them to devote every minute to practice. We 
have a dreadful time making her see that there 
are other duties at St. Catharine’s which require 
our attention, too — such as our studies. She 
expects more from Janet Trelawney and from 
me than from anybody else, and if it were not 
for Sister Irmingarde she would plant us both 
on piano-stools, and keep us there until we 

237 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


graduate and leave school. But when she gets 
too impossible Sister Irmingarde drops into her 
room, and they have a little visit, and then Sis- 
ter Cecilia is lovely and reasonable for weeks. 

To-day, after the first minute or two, I was 
glad I was with her. She is so cold and severe 
that I would never think of crying on her; and 
as she never thinks of anything but music I 
knew she would keep me up to the mark. We 
greeted each other politely (we are always as 
formal as if we were meeting at a tea), and I sat 
down at the piano and began to play the Chopin 
Nocturne in G Minor, while Sister Cecilia 
roamed about the room, the way she always 
does, stopping short when things go wrong, 
and sometimes breaking into a dreadful little 
groan if she thinks they are worse than usual. 
To-day she was very quiet, but I shouldn’t 
have minded if she hadn’t been. I forgot her. 

The Nocturne fitted into everything else, 
and at first I didn’t mind playing it. Sister 
Cecilia has a large music-room, with two big 
windows overlooking the convent garden. I 
was playing without notes — she always makes 
us memorize everything for the second lesson 
on it — and from where I sat I could look out 
over the garden to the infirmary wing of the con- 
vent — the wing where that very hour Sister 
238 


CRUMPLED UP OVER THE KEYBOARD 







THE SHADOW OF THE ANGEL 


Irmingarde lay dying. I looked from window 
to window, and wondered which room she had. 
Then I decided that I knew, and I seemed to see 
the room itself, with the great doctors and nurses 
working over her, fighting death, and nuns 
praying close beside her. 

I was playing the Gregorian chant in the 
Nocturne by this time, but I didn’t realize it 
until suddenly the Alleluia rang out. I had 
loved that while I was practising it — it’s so big 
and victorious and triumphant; but now, at the 
first note of it, something in me gave way with a 
sudden snap, and I stopped playing and crumpled 
up over the keyboard. How could I play an 
Alleluia when Sister Irmingarde was dying? 
How could I ever play or do or be anything 
again when she was gone? 

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I knew in a 
vague way that it was Sister Cecilia’s. I re- 
membered what Sister Harmona had said about 
going on with one’s work, and I wanted to do 
it, but I couldn’t; and I didn’t want to explain 
to Sister Cecilia, for I felt sure she wouldn’t 
understand. But I heard myself saying, ^‘To 
have Sister Irmingarde die is the one thing I 
can’t bear — I simply canH bear it.” And some- 
thing inside of me went on saying over and over 
again, as if it were a bit of machinery wound up 

239 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


to go forever, canT bear it. I can’t bear it. 
I can’t bear it.” 

Sister Cecilia moved away from me and crossed 
the room. For a long time she did not speak, 
and I was glad, for it gave me a chance to pull 
myself together. When she did her voice was 
so strange that I sat up and looked at her. She 
was staring out of the window toward the in- 
firmary, and her face had the look every face 
in St. Catharine’s had that day. 

‘‘Can’t bear it,” she said. And she added, 
slowly, “I think that is the way we all feel.” 

She stood for a moment longer, looking toward 
the infirmary. When she spoke again I knew 
she had forgotten me and was thinking aloud. 

“We took her,” she said, “as we take every- 
thing — as if the wonder of her, the miracle of 
having her with us, was no more than our due. 
We had a genius here, and we harnessed her to 
the plough. We have killed her among us — 
God forgive us!” 

Then her eyes fell on me, and she remembered, 
and crossed the room and caught me by the 
shoulders as if she wanted to shake me. 

“Are you blind, too,” she asked, “you little 
geese in her classes? Or do you know what you 
have had in her? If you do — if even one or two 
of you have the faintest glimmer of it in your 
240 


THE SHADOW OF THE ANGEL 


foolish heads — you will carry her inspiration as 
a wonderful thing throughout your lives, and she 
will not have died in vain.” 

She looked toward the infirmary wing again — 
a long look, as if she were saying good-by. 
Then she pulled down the window-shade, and 
turned toward me with her usual manner. 

“Go to your room,” she said, brusquely. 
“You’re not up to music. Go to your room — 
and pray for her.” 

I went, and when I closed the door I heard the 
key turn in the lock. I had never known she 
cared so much for' Sister Irmingarde I am sure 
Sister Irmingarde herself did not know it — nor 
how all the girls loved her, and the little children, 
too. Perhaps we never would have understood 
if she had gone on year after year, doing wonder- 
ful things for every one in her wonderful way, 
that made us take them as natu ally as we took 
the sunshine or the air we breathed. 

No message came to us that day, but the 
sound we dreaded most we did not hear — the 
slow tolling of the chapel bell, that follows the 
death of a Sister. I knew now it was listening 
for this that made the nuns look so strange. 

All that night I lay awake, looking into the 
darkness and thinking of the room in the in- 
firmary. The storm that had been threatening 
241 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


since morning broke at midnight, with thunder 
and lightning and heavy rain. The wind wailed 
around the windows like the “Dies Irse” in the 
Manzoni Requiem. I could almost hear the 
words: 

“Dies Irae, dies ilia, 

Solvet saeclum in favilla. 

Teste David cum sybilla.” 

About two o’clock in the morning Maudie 
Joyce came to my room and crept in bed with 
me, and a little later Mabel Blossom came, too. 
They said they were too nervous and unhappy to 
be alone, and that the storm frightened them. 
We didn’t talk much, but when the lightning 
flashed I could see that their eyes were open. 
I heard them slip away a little before morning, 
but I was too wretched to speak to them. 

Day came at last. The five o’clock rising 
bell for the Community rang first, and then the 
bell for mass, and finally I heard the voices of 
the nuns singing in the chapel. I wondered how 
they could sing. But of course they had to. 
Then the sun rose. I wondered how it could 
rise. But of course it had to, too. But I 
couldn’t bear seeing it shining in at my windows 
when Sister Irmingarde was dying. The lay 
Sisters were polishing the waxed floors of the 
242 


THE SHADOW OF THE ANGEL 


hall as I went to breakfast — but I didn’t wonder 
over that. I knew now how wise it was to work 
every blessed minute, and I made out a pro- 
gramme then and there that would keep me busy 
till bedtime. 

As I turned a corner into the refectory hall I 
met Sister Edna. The moment I looked at her 
face I knew she had good news. It was per- 
fectly quiet and serene — as if she had fastened 
on again a mask she had dropped for a day or 
two. But her eyes shone like little lamps under 
the white band across her forehead. She didn’t 
wait for me to speak. 

‘‘Yes, she is better. May,” she said, and her 
voice was like the soft notes of a silver trumpet. 
‘‘She's hetter!" The crisis is past. The doctors 
say she will live!” 

I have heard some wonderful music, and I 
expect to hear more, but never anything so 
beautiful as Sister Edna’s words. I felt like 
singing them, and shouting them, and calling 
to the world to stop and listen to them. Sister 
Irmingarde was better! Sister Irmingarde was 
going to live! It seemed as if the whole universe 
must know such news and be thrilled by it. 
She was coming back to us, and we could go on 
living and working and being happy in the old 
way. No — not in the old way — I didn’t mean 

243 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


that; in better ways we had thought about and 
prayed for when we thought she was slipping 
away from us. We did not deserve it, but we 
were to have another chance. Sister Irmin- 
garde would live! 

That night we girls met in my room. We 
were so happy that it almost hurt. We made 
more noble resolutions in half an hour than we 
could carry out if we gave all our days to them 
for twenty years. At last we were tired out 
from talking at once, so we sat quiet for a minute. 
Then Mabel Blossom said, softly, ‘‘I wonder 
what we would have done if she had died.’’ 

We glared at Mabel. It is horrible to have a 
cold chill run down one’s spine in the midst of 
perfect happiness. Kittie James said she thought 
we would have died, too. But Maudie Joyce 
shook her head. 

“People don’t, usually,” she said. “They 
want to, but they don’t. They have to go right 
on living. Mother said when my brother died 
that that was the hardest part of it — having 
to go on living.” 

The girls shivered. 

“God wouldn’t let such a thing happen to 
us,” Mabel Muriel Murphy said. 

Maudie Joyce looked thoughtful. 

“He does sometimes,” she said. “He didn’t 
244 


THE SHADOW OF THE ANGEL 


this time, but He will some time, you know. 
Dreadful sorrows come to people when they grow 
older. Some of them may come to us. I feel 
as if we had learned a great deal the last few 
days, but Fm not sure just what it is.” 

She sat still for a moment, as if she had looked 
into the future and caught a glimpse of strange 
and terrible things life held for her. ‘T wonder 
if we can bear our sorrows when they come,” 
she added. 

‘‘We’ll be given strength,” said Mabel Blossom 
primly, 

“Through prayer,” added Mabel Muriel 
Murphy, devoutly. 

“What do you say. May?” asked Maudie. 
“What am I trying to get hold of that I can’t 
think out?” 

I thought a little while, and then a light 
broke upon me, for I remembered Sister Cecilia’s 
words. 

“Troubles will come,” I said, “and we will 
bear them — because we’ll have to. That’s why 
people bear them. But I think we’ll bear them 
better because we are Sister Irmingarde’s girls. 
We haven’t lost her this time, but we must some 
day. In one way we will lose her when we leave 
school. But we can take into the world what she 
has taught us, and we’ll always have the memory 

245 


MAY IVERSON TACKLES LIFE 


of her. It will be a kind of shield, such as 
knights wore in battle, and as long as we wear 
it over our hearts nothing can hurt us much.” 

^‘That’s it,” said Maudie. ‘‘Only I couldn’t 
find the words. We have learned that she has 
given us a shield and that it is — ” 

“Inspiration,” I said. 

“Religion,” Mabel Muriel Murphy said. 

“Courage,” Mabel Blossom said. 

“Sympathy and understanding and charity,” 
Maudie Joyce said. 

“Love, too,” Kittie James said, timidly. And 
I was glad. For I saw that after all we did know, 
every one of us, what Sister Irmingarde had been 
giving us all the years we were with her. 

But by this time Mabel Blossom had listened 
to as much serious conversation as her frivolous 
spirit could bear. She yawned a terrible yawn, 
and brought down the heel of her slipper on the 
table before her, first taking the precaution to 
remove the slipper from her foot. 

“Let’s go to bed. May,” she said, when she 
had gained what Sister Irmingarde calls “our 
unwilling attention.” “Our guests want to go 
home!” 

THE END 








